SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS

IT WAS THE night before Christmas and all over the house nothing was stirring because even the mouse was exhausted.

There were presents everywhere: square ones with bows, long ones with ribbons. Fat ones in Santa paper. Thin ones tantalising as a diamond bracelet, or disappointing as a chopstick?

Food supplies had been stockpiled like a war-warning; puddings the size of bombs were exploding off the shelves. Bullets of dates were stacked in cardboard rounds. A line of grouse, like toy warplanes, hung outside the back door. Chestnuts were ready to heat and fire. The free-range organic turkey – nothing that a good vet couldn’t revive – was crouched next to hangar-loads of tinfoil.

‘Good thing the Twelfth Night pork is still eating windfall apples in an orchard in Kent,’ you said, trying to squeeze round the kitchen table.

I was staggering under the weight of the Christmas cake – it was the kind of thing medieval masons used to choose as the cornerstone of a cathedral. You took it from me and went to pack it in the car. Everything had to go in the car, because we were going to the country tonight. The more you loaded, the more likely it seemed that the turkey would be doing the driving. There was no room for you, and I was sharing my seat with a wicker reindeer.

‘Hackles,’ you said.

Oh, God, we had forgotten the cat.

‘Hackles doesn’t celebrate Christmas,’ I said.

‘Tie this tinsel round his basket and get in.’

‘Are we going to have our Christmas row now or shall we wait until we’re on the road and you’ve forgotten the wine?’

‘The wine is underneath the box of crackers.’

‘That’s not the wine, that’s the turkey. He’s so fresh I had to tape him in to stop him trying to claw his way out like something from Poe.’

‘Don’t be disgusting. That turkey had a happy life.’

‘You’ve had a pretty good life but I’m not thinking of eating you.’

I ran and bit your neck. I love your neck. You pushed me away – in play – but do I imagine that you push me away not in play these days?

You smiled a small smile and went to repack the car.

Soon after midnight. Cat, tinsel, tree with flashing lights, reindeer, presents, food, my arm out of the window because there was nowhere else to put it – you and me set off to a country cottage we had rented to celebrate Christmas.

We drove through the seasonal drunks waving streamers and singing about Rudolph in red-nosed solidarity. You said it would be quicker to go right through the middle of town so late at night, and as you were slowly pulling away from the traffic lights down the main street I thought I saw something moving.

‘Stop!’ I said. ‘Can you reverse?’

The street was completely empty now, and you took us backwards, the engine whining under the weight of the effort, until we were outside BUYBUYBABY, the world’s biggest department store, finally and reluctantly closed from midnight Christmas Eve for an entire twenty-four hours (online shopping always available).

I got out of the car. The front window of BUYBUYBABY had been arranged as a Nativity scene, complete with Mary and Joseph in ski-wear and a number of farm animals keeping warm under tartan dog coats. There was no gold, frankincense or myrrh – these three kings had bought their presents from BBB. Jesus was getting an Xbox, a bike and an apartment-friendly drum kit.

His mother, Mary, had been given a steam iron.

Flitting about in front of the Nativity, her nose pressed inside the window, was a tiny child.

‘What are you doing in there?’ I said.

‘Trapped,’ said the child.

I went back to the car and tapped on your window.

‘There’s a child left behind in the shop – we’ve got to get her out.’

You came and had a look. The child waved. You looked doubtful. ‘She probably belongs to the security guard,’ you said.

‘She says she’s trapped! Call the police.’

The child smiled and shook her head as you took out your phone. There was something about her smile – I felt uncertain.

‘Who are you?’ I said.

‘I am the Spirit of Christmas.’

I heard her clearly. She spoke clearly.

‘I can’t get a signal,’ you said. ‘Try yours.’

I tried mine. It was dead. We looked up and down the strangely deserted street. I was starting to panic. I pulled and pushed at the doors to the store. Locked. No cleaners. No janitors. This was Christmas Eve.

The voice came again. ‘I am the Spirit of Christmas.’

‘Oh, come on,’ you said. ‘It’s a publicity stunt.’

But I wasn’t listening to you, I was fixed on the face in the window, which seemed to change every second, as though light was playing on it, shrouding, then revealing, the expression. The eyes were not the eyes of a child.

‘She is our responsibility,’ I said, quietly, not really to you.

‘She is not,’ you said. ‘Come on, I’ll call the police as we drive.’

‘Let me out!’ said the child as you turned back towards the car.

‘We’ll send someone, I promise. We’re going to find a phone— ’

The child interrupted. ‘You must let me out. Will you leave some of your gifts, some of your food, in the doorway, just there?’

You turned back. ‘This is crazy.’

But the child was hypnotising me.

‘Yes,’ I said and, half-dazed, I went to the car and flipped up the back and started dragging wrapped shapes and bags of food towards the doorway of the department store. Every time I put something down, you picked it up again and put it back in the car.

‘You’ve gone mad,’ you said. ‘This is a Christmas stunt – we’re being filmed, I know it. It’s reality TV.’

‘No, this isn’t reality TV, this is real,’ I said, and my voice sounded far away. ‘This isn’t what we know, it’s what we don’t know – but it’s true. I’m telling you, it’s true.’

‘All right,’ you said, ‘if this is what it takes to get us back on the road – here’s the bags. OK? Here and here.’ You slammed them down in the doorway, your face flushed with tiredness and exasperation. I know that face.

And you stood back, hands in fists, not even thinking about the child.

Suddenly all the lights went out in the window of the store. And then the child was standing in between us on the street.

Your face changed. You put your hand on the smooth glass, as clear and closed as a dream.

‘Are we dreaming?’ you said to me. ‘How did she do that?’

‘I’m coming with you,’ said the child. ‘Where are you going?’

And so, past one o’clock in the morning, we set off again, my arm inside the car now, the child on the back seat next to Hackles, who had climbed out of his basket and was purring. I looked in the wing mirror as we left and saw our bags of food and gifts being taken away, one by one, by dark figures.

‘They are the ones who live in the doorways,’ said the child, as though reading my thoughts. ‘They have nothing.’

‘We are going to be arrested,’ you said. ‘Theft of in-store display. Dumping on a public highway. Abduction. Merry Christmas to you too, Officer.’

‘We’ve done the right thing,’ I said.

‘What exactly have we done,’ you said, ‘except lose half of what we need and collect a lost child?’

‘It happens every year,’ said the child. ‘In different ways, in different places. If I am not set free by Christmas morning, the world grows heavier. The world is heavier than you know.’

We drove along in silence for a while. The sky was black, pinned with stars. I imagined myself, high above this road, looking back on Planet Earth, blue in the blackness, white-patched, polar-capped. This was life and home.

When I was a child, my father gave me a glass snow-scene of the earth shook with stars. I used to lie in bed and turn it over and over, falling asleep with the stars behind my eyes, feeling warm and light and safe.

The world is weightless, hanging in space, unsupported, a gravitational mystery, sun-warmed, gas-cooled. Our gift.

I used to fight off sleep for as long as I could, squinting out of one closing eye at my silent, turning world.

I grew up. My father died. The snow-scene was in his house, in my old bedroom. When we were clearing I dropped it, and the little globe fell out of its heavy, star-shot liquid. That was when I cried. I don’t know why.

I must have reached across the car seat then and taken your hand as we cruised along on the night road.

‘What’s the matter?’ you said, gently.

‘I was thinking about my father.’

‘Strange. I was thinking about my mother.’

‘Thinking what?’

You squeezed my hand. I saw your ring finger glinting under the low green dashboard lights. I remember that ring and when I gave it to you. I see it every day but today I see it.

You said, ‘I wish I’d done more for her, said more to her, but it’s too late now.’

‘You never got on.’

‘Why is that? Why do so many parents and children never get on?’

‘Is that why you don’t want us to have children?’

‘No! No. Work… We always said we’d think about it…but…yes, perhaps… Why would I want my child to hate me? Isn’t there enough hatred in the world?’

You never talked like this. Glancing at your profile, in the eerie green light, I could see the tension in your jaw. I love your face. I was about to say so, but you said, ‘Ignore me. It’s this time of year. A family time, I guess.’

‘Yes. What a mess we make of it.’

‘Of what? Of our families, or of Christmas?’

‘Both. Neither. No wonder everyone goes shopping. Displacement activity.’ You smiled, trying to lighten the mood.

I said, ‘I thought you liked the presents under the tree?’

‘I do, but how many do we need?’

I was about to remind you that you had yelled in my face less than an hour ago, when a voice from the back seat said, ‘If only the world could rid itself of just some of its contents.’

We both glanced round. I realised that the green light in the car wasn’t the instrument panel; it was her. She was glowing.

‘Do you think she’s radioactive as well?’ you said.

‘As well as what?’

‘As well as…well, as well, as I don’t know, as well as…’

‘Suppose she’s who she says she is?’

‘She hasn’t said who she is.’

‘Yes, she has, she’s…’

‘I am the Spirit of Christmas,’ said the child.

I said, ‘And suppose something extraordinary is happening to us tonight.’

‘An unknown child on a wild-goose chase?’

‘At least it’s seasonal.’

‘What?’

‘The wild goose.’

This time you squeezed my hand and I saw the muscle in your jaw lower just a little.

I want to tell you about love, and how much I love you, and that I love you like the sun rising, every day, and that loving you has made my life better and happier. I know this will embarrass you, so I don’t say anything at all.

You switched on the radio. ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.’

You sang along. ‘ “Peace on earth and mercy mild…” ’

I saw you watching the child in the rear-view mirror.

‘If this goes according to plan,’ you said, ‘we should be seeing Santa and a team of reindeer about now. What do you think about that, Spirit of Christmas?’

The voice from the back seat said, ‘Turn right here, please!’

You do. You hesitate, but you do it, because she’s that sort of child.

You took the dark bend, accelerated forward and stalled the car.

Just touching down over the roof of a handsome Georgian house, holly wreath on the blue front door, was a sledge pulled by six antlered reindeer.

Father Christmas smiled at us and waved. The child waved back and climbed out of the car. Locks didn’t seem to make any difference to her. Hackles jumped out and followed her.

Santa clapped his hands. The house was in darkness but a sash window on the first floor was pushed up by some unseen inside hand; three bulging sacks thudded to the ground. Santa Claus shouldered them easily and loaded them onto his sledge.

‘He’s robbing the place!’ you said, opening the car door and getting out. ‘Hey, you!’

The figure in red came forward convivially, stamping his boots and rubbing his hands.

‘We can only offer this service once a year,’ he told you.

‘What bloody service?’

Santa Claus took the opportunity to fill his pipe. He blew star-shaped smoke rings, blue into the white air.

‘In the old days we used to leave presents, because people didn’t have much. Now everyone has so much, they write to us to come and take it away. You’ve no idea how much better it feels to wake up on Christmas morning to find it all gone.’

Santa rummaged in one of the bags. ‘Look, hair curlers, a year’s supply of bath salts, more socks than anyone can have feet, baked garlic in olive oil, an Eiffel Tower embroidery kit, two china pigs.’

‘And now what?’ you said, half-furious, half-fazed. ‘Car-boot sale for New Year?’

‘Well, come and see if you like,’ said Santa. ‘Follow me.’

He pocketed his pipe and went towards his sledge. The Spirit of Christmas went with him, and Hackles.

‘Hey, that’s our cat!’ you shouted at the bottom of the sledge, because by now it was in the air.

The Spirit of Christmas was looking very pleased with herself.

We jumped in the car and followed the sledge as best we could, though it took the direct route across the fields.

‘It’s some kind of jet-pack hovercraft,’ you said. ‘How did we get into this?’

Now we were off the little road and bouncing up a track that was killing the car’s suspension. You had both hands on the wheel.

The sledge came to land. A few minutes later we caught up.

We were outside a dark and wind-broken cottage. The roof tiles were slipping and the gutter was hung with icicles, like the electric ones people buy as decorations, except that these icicles weren’t electric and they weren’t decorations. The fence stakes round the house were tied together with bits of wire and the gate was propped shut with a stone. An old dog slept in the open doorway of a disused caravan.

As the dog raised his head to bark, Santa Claus threw a glittering bone through the air. The old dog caught it contentedly.

While the reindeer ate moss from their nosebags, Santa and the Spirit of Christmas went to the house and opened the front door.

‘Is this a trap? Like Don’t Look Now? Are we going to be killed?’ You were scared. I wasn’t scared but that was because I believed in this.

Santa came out of the cottage, stooping slightly under the weight of a moth-eaten bag. He was holding a mince pie and a glass of whisky.

‘Not many people leave anything these days,’ he said, downing the whisky in one, ‘but I know this house and they know me. Pain and Want must vanish tonight. Once a year is all the power I am given.’

‘What power?’ you said. ‘Where’s the child? What have you done with my cat?’

Santa gestured back at the cottage, its windows lit up now with the strange green that accompanied the child. We could see quite clearly, even at a distance, that the table had a clean cloth on it and the child was arranging a ham, a pie, cheese, while our cat, Hackles, purred about with his tail in the air.

Santa smiled, and tipped the sack onto the sledge. What fell out was musty and old and broken. He picked up the pieces of a plate, a torn jacket, a doll without a head. Now the sack was empty.

Without speaking, he offered the empty sack to you and pointed towards the car. He wants you to fill it, I thought. Do it, please; do it.

But I didn’t dare to say this out loud. This was for you. About you.

You hesitated, and then you opened all the doors of the car and started pushing presents and food into the sack. It was only a small sack, but no matter how much you put into it, you couldn’t fill it. I could see you looking at what was left.

‘Give him everything,’ I said.

You leaned over and started taking things from the back seat. The car was almost empty now, except for the wicker reindeer, and that seemed too ridiculous to give to anybody.

You handed the heavy sack to the red figure, who was watching you intently.

‘You haven’t given me everything,’ he said.

‘If you mean the wicker reindeer…’

The Spirit of Christmas had come out of the house now, Hackles in her arms. He was glowing green too. I had never seen a green cat.

The child said to you, ‘Give him what you fear.’

The moment was still, utterly still. I looked away like I did when I asked you to marry me, not knowing what you would say.

‘Yes,’ you said. ‘Yes.’

There was a terrific thud and the bag fell to the ground in a great weight. Santa nodded, and with some difficulty picked up the sack and threw it onto the sledge.

‘It’s time to go now,’ said the Spirit of Christmas.

We got in the car and drove back along the track.

The frost had brightened the ground and hardened the stars. Beyond the dry-stone walls, the sheep were in huddles in the fields. A pair of hunting horses ran along the side of the fence, their breath steaming like dragons’.

After a while you stopped and got out. I followed you. I put my arms round you. I could hear your heart beating.

‘What shall we do now that we’ve given it all away?’ you said.

‘Haven’t we got anything left?’

‘A bag of food behind the front seat, and this…’ You felt in your pocket and took out a foil-wrapped chocolate snowman.

We both laughed. It was so silly. You broke a piece off to give to the child in the back of the car, but she was sleeping.

‘I don’t understand any of this,’ you said. ‘Do you?’

‘No. Is there any more chocolate?’

We shared the last pieces and I said to you, ‘Do you remember when we first met and we had no money at all – we were paying off student loans and I was working two jobs, and we ate sausages and stuffing on Christmas Day, but no turkey because we couldn’t afford one? You knitted me a jumper.’

‘And one sleeve was longer than the other.’

‘And I made you a stool out of that ash tree the council had cut down. They left half the trunk on the street. Do you remember?’

‘God, yes, and it was freezing because you were in that horrible houseboat, and you wouldn’t come home with me because you hated my mother.’

‘I didn’t hate your mother! You hated your mother.’

‘Yes…’ you said slowly. ‘What a waste of life hatred is.’

You turned me to face you. You were quiet and serious.

‘Do you still love me?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘I love you, but I don’t say it enough, do I?’

‘I know you feel it. But sometimes…I…’

‘Yes?’

‘I feel like you don’t want me. I don’t want to force you but I miss your body. Our kisses and closeness, and yes, the rest too.’

You were quiet. Then you said, ‘When he, Santa Claus, or whatever he is, asked me to give him what I fear, I realised that if everything were still in the car and you were gone, then what? What if our house, my work, my life, everything I have was all where it should be, and you were gone? And I thought – that’s what I fear. I fear it so much I can’t even think about it, but it’s there all the time, like a war that’s coming.’

‘What is?’

‘That bit by bit I am pushing you away.’

‘Do you want to push me away?’

You kissed me – like we used to kiss each other – and I could feel my tears, and then I realised they were yours.

We got back in the car and drove slowly on through the last miles towards the village, the uneven roofs visible under the vanishing moon. Soon it would be day.

A hooded figure was walking by the side of the road. You pulled alongside and stopped the car, opening the window. ‘Would you like a ride?’ you said.

The figure turned to us; it was a woman carrying a baby. The woman pushed back her hood; her face was beautiful and strong. Unlined and clear. She smiled, and the baby smiled. It was a baby, but its eyes weren’t the eyes of a baby.

Instinctively I looked round at the back seat. The cat was curled up in his basket, but the child was gone.