The Night Before the Christmas Before I Was Married & Other Festive Tales (2 page)

S
oon after what I now refer to as my ‘Holiday Incident’ I started writing
‘Happy Holidays?’
in cards instead of
‘Merry Christmas!’

My wife was screaming out of the landing window.

‘You are not putting that monstrosity on
my
roof.’

I looked down at Rudolph standing two feet tall next to me. His paint was peeling, one antler had broken off leaving only a long, sharp, shard pointing straight up and a long length of cable protruded from his worn posterior that, when plugged in, would illuminate him for the whole neighbourhood to see.

Of course that wasn’t the thought going through my head as I hung from the roof of my house, the electrical cord that was wrapped around my foot the only thing keeping me from falling two stories and landing on my head. And Rudolph? Well, instead of lighting up he was swinging and hitting me repeatedly in the face. My wife was inside the house and I was shouting and maybe I was screaming. When I eventually told the story to my friends I didn’t mention the screaming.

I could see frost on the garden as it spun underneath me as I hung, twisting in the air, molested by a shabby reindeer.

‘What do you want? I’m trying to get ready, we’re going out in half an hour.’

I could hear her through the bedroom window. She sounded the same upside down as she did the right way up.

Dear Santa, I have been a very good boy this year, please don’t let me become the person they remember as Reindeer Man.

LOCAL MAN FOUND WITH HEAD UP REINDEER’S ARSE.

Children would make pilgrimages to the place where Rudolph nearly bought the big one.

‘No, darling. Santa was worried but it was all right in the end – Rudolph could fly but the Reindeer Man couldn’t.’

I kept thinking of ice skaters and how they keep their balance after spinning around over and over. My memory was telling me that they tried to keep focussed on one fixed point so I tried it and the number on door 81 became my focus. Really I was just trying to keep from thinking about how old the cable was and how it would snap any second.

I started in the loft looking for decorations except I knew we didn’t have any because we’d just moved into the house two months ago. My wife is at the bottom of the ladder saying, ‘Just go to the shop and buy a tree. If you wait for five minutes I’ll come with you and help you choose baubles.’

Notice the careful positioning of the word ‘help’.

So, of course, I ignored her and started rummaging, a medium sized torch shoved into my mouth, wedging it so far open that my jaw ached and saliva ran down at the corners. It was a treasure trove up there but for every box I opened, for every neatly wrapped nugget of a forgotten holiday season I found I was greeted with a thump, a bump or a grump from the Grinch downstairs.

Dear Santa, although I have not been a particularly good boy this year I was wondering whether you would see your way clear to leaving me a ball gag and restraints. They aren’t for me so I thought you may make an exception.

It was then I found him. My soon to be nemesis. Dusty. Forgotten. Rudolph.

I carefully carried him down the ladder to the landing, put him lightly on the ground and began dusting him off. It elicited exactly the response I expected.

‘What the bloody hell is that?’ screamed my current nemesis.

On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me; three blazing rows, two dirty looks and a promise there’d be no sex for me.

There were these carol singers in Australia who had gone out to do their thing and two of them had died of sunstroke. Perfectly normal thing to do at that time of year but they got carried away, filled with the spirit of the season and that was it, game over. This sort of thing happens every day, we just don’t expect it to happen to us.

Rudolph had proved to be heavier than I imagined and it took me some time to wrestle the damn thing step by step, hauling it towards its appointment on the roof. By the time we reached our destination I was panting from the effort, I put him down by my side and bent over, my hands on my knees as I tried to catch my breath and… well you know the rest.

Dear Santa, thank you for the lovely flowers. And the grapes. The doctors and nurses have been wonderful and although the injuries I suffered were extensive only one of them is permanent. As I fell, only the only thing that stopped my face from hitting the pavement was a certain red-nosed friend of yours. I have been in touch with my lawyer who says I have a good case against you as I was erecting an effigy in your honour, thereby working for your, therefore you are liable as an employer. You will be hearing from us in due course.

A long time later, many months after I got out of the hospital my wife and I returned to the old house. It was November, maybe early December. I’d grown used to wearing the patch over my eye. We stood, the cold biting at us, my arm around her as she snuggled in for warmth and we looked at the house.

After a couple of minutes my wife said, ‘Come on darling, it’s freezing. Can we go now?’

I smiled and nodded, kissed her brow and a kid ran out of the open garage wrapped up and ready for the cold. He ran past us, did a double take and stopped.    

‘Mister,’ he said, staring at me wide-eyed. ‘Are you a pirate?’

I laughed and shook my head.

‘Wh-?’ he began but the sentence stalled.

‘You have to be a good boy at Christmas time,’ I said, leaning in close to impart secret knowledge to him. ‘I was a bad boy and Rudolph did this to me with his antlers…’

I lifted the patch. The kid screamed and ran. To destroy the good name of Rudolph was one of the things I enjoyed most.

My wife and I turned our backs on the incident at number 18 and went to find a bar we used to drink in.

C
hristmas wasn’t the best time of year for me. I don’t mean I’d be on the phone to the Samaritans, but after what happened I always approached the season with a sense of unease. Perhaps that’s why I’d started with Meals on Wheels, to face my fears in a round about sort of way. I’d been delivering for around five years, ever since my Gran became ill and I had to look after her. People didn’t realise the importance of Meals on Wheels, especially at this time of year its the lifeline to those who otherwise wouldn’t be able to cook a decent meal for themselves. To be honest, I didn’t ever think I would stop delivering until I was the one who needed food delivering to me. Last Christmas changed all that. Really stopped me in my tracks. For good this time.

You may say I’m callous, heartless, uncaring, believe me I’ve heard it all before. I couldn’t tell anyone about it for months but you can’t keep it inside forever so I might as well tell you the whole sordid story from beginning to end. I’m not saying you’ll sympathise, you probably won’t but at least it might go some way to help you understand. I don’t know.

It all began in early November, I had my usual round on the Palace Estate but one of my colleagues, George, had broken his leg and wouldn’t be back until after Christmas. As he was a good friend I offered to do his round for him. At the time it seemed easy, so very easy, just an extra quarter of an hour a day to help those less fortunate than myself.

Mr and Mrs Moon were always first on my round, closest to the depot and some of the nicest people it has ever been my privilege to meet. Then Mrs Jones followed by Mr Balofski, onwards and northwards until the end of my route at Mrs Hughes house. This time, however, I continued on through Mount Grove to take on four more deliveries culminating in a drop in Battlefield Road at Mr Grimwald’s house.

I remember there was a cold but deliberate breeze throwing the remnants of the autumn leaves around the front garden of the house. It stood around twenty metres back from the road, a respectable, detached, Victorian-looking house, seeming much too big for a solitary old man in the twilight of his life. The windows all glittered with condensation and somewhere high above me I thought I saw the twitching of curtains.

The house must have see more generations pass through it that I cared to imagine. Although from a distance the appearance was semi-Victorian, the closer you came to the house, the older the brickwork seemed to be. As I opened the gate to the garden goose bumps rose on my arms and neck despite the thick layers I was wearing. The house itself was symmetrical with a single door in the centre flanked on each side by a bay window. This in turn was mirrored by two more floors of windows and skylights glinting just out of sight.

As I climbed the three stone steps to the huge door the gate slammed at the end of the path, making me jump. I turned back to the door and looked for where a bell-push might be but there was none, no knocker, no bell, just a plain black door. Realising that I would have to attract the attention of the curtain-twitcher I raised my clenched fist and brought my hand forward to make sharp contact with the wood…

“Hello. You must be the new boy,” said Mr Grimwald as he creaked open the door.

“Erm, yes, that’s right. I’m with meals on wheels, I’ve brought your dinner for you,” I replied, slightly wrong-footed by being referred to as a boy at forty-two.

“Excellent, why don’t you come inside.”

Mr Grimwald walked into the hallway beckoning me to follow. He wasn’t at all as strange as I had pictured him as I crept up his garden path. A house with such gothic sensibilities meant you really expected someone with a long, pointy nose, whispy grey hair and a faintly menacing demeanour. Mr Grimwald was the antithesis of this; a stocky man dressed in a tweed suit with a lilac cravat, who carried a perpetually empty pipe. His rosy red cheeks gave him something of a Santa Claus persona and a gap between his two front teeth that showed on the regular occasions when he grinned made him an odd but endearing old man.

After I had served up his dinner, I excused myself and returned to my van to make my way home. The inside of the house appeared to be extremely hotchpotch with items strewn seemingly haphazard on every available surface. As I closed the door of my van a chill once more swept over my body and I stared down the garden path towards the house looking back menacingly at me. I started the engine, feeling idiotic and childlike to be deriving any fear from an old house and a jolly old man.

Our meetings in the weeks that followed were brief, polite and sincere. He had lost his wife five years ago and had no family left. He amused himself with his collection of vintage posters from around the world, all framed and adorning any spare vertical surface. Here was an original Houdini, there a 1960’s pantomime, all very interesting and all in immaculate condition no matter how old and odd. However, I felt the chill again as I cast my gaze over them.

The first week of December yielded the first snow of the season lying around an inch deep but instead of putting a spring in my step it left me with an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach because I knew that this was the beginning of the Christmas season for real. People had begun to decorate their houses and I liked helping in my own little ways with the people on my round; putting up a streamer here and there, occasionally decorating a tree. It gave me a real sense of warmth to help people rather than simply feeding them which was unusual because before Meals on Wheels I always dreaded the season to be jolly. I have a theory that a person’s Christmas decorations say a lot about their personality and I was intrigued as to how Mr Grimwald would manage to fit any decorations into his already over-populated house.

On this particular round I had decided to take my dog, Sally, with me. Not so much for the company but because I knew she loved the attention of the diners and equally they loved tempting her with titbits and morsels. After a fairly uneventful round, I finally reached the corner of Battlefield Road and Mr Grimwald’s residence. Sally had become excitable, barking, whining and fretting in the back of the van so I gathered up the trays and left her in there to clam down.

“Hello again Gary,” said Mr Grimwald as he opened the door. “First snow of winter eh?”

“Evening Mr Grimwald,” I stepped over the threshold of his house just as a gust of wind punched a cloud of powdery snow into his hallway but apart from this impromptu decoration I found the house unchanged. After I had set Mr Grimwald’s dinner down I made to leave but as I reached the hallway I noticed a new frame, clean and dustless against the sun-bleached wallpaper. Upon closer examination it proved to be an advertisement for this year’s pantomime at the local Palladium but for some reason the picture of ‘Neil Smart as Widow Twanky’ had been neatly trimmed out leaving the reddy-brown background of the picture frame clearly visible from behind. I stared at it for a moment but was jolted out of my fascinated trance but what sounded like a shout from way above me in the house. I stopped dead but as I tried to listen closer no more sounds were forthcoming. When I arrived back at my van Sally had vanished and even after a brief scout around the vicinity she was nowhere to be seen. I jogged lightly back up to the house to see if Mr Grimwald had seen her and as I reached the steps, the door sharply swung open.

“Did you forget something?” Mr Grimwald asked, grinning.

“No, no, its just my dog, Sally, she was in the van and she seems to have run off.”

“Ah, she’s behind you.”

I spun around but there was no sign of Sally. “No, no she isn’t.”

“Oh yes she is.” He flicked his wrist, gesturing towards the garden behind me.

I looked over into the garden once more but she was nowhere to be seen.

“No she isn’t. I… ”

“Oh yes she is.” Mr Grimwald’s voice had risen ever so slightly and had a vague hint of hysteria as if he was about to burst into fits of uncontrollable laughter but before I could challenge him on it Sally ran out from inside the house and jumped into my arms.

“There she is, you see - behind you all the while,” he smiled and waved. “See you next week.”

As I drove away Sally sat bolt upright in the back of the van watching the house tail into the distance and growling almost inaudibly under her breath. I resolved not to bring her on my rounds again this Christmas season in case she made a habit of this disappearing act of hers.

That evening I went to visit George to see how he was holding up with his broken leg. It wasn’t long before the conversation turned towards Mr Grimwald.

“So,” said George with a wry smile. “What do you make of the old fruit?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Sometimes he seems perfectly normal and other times… ”

“Other times he makes you skin crawl, right?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I don’t know, most of the time he’s just this old tweed guy with an empty pipe,” he paused for a moment as if he was going to stop there but after mulling it over continued. “There was this one time there was a note on the front door. Said he was ill, just to come in and set the food down.”

“What did you do?”

“Just that. But after I had laid it out I got a bit paranoid that he might be… Well you know… ”

“Incapacitated.”

“Or worse. So I started upstairs - calling out for him, asking if he was alright.”

“And was he?”

“Well, I got as far as the second floor before he came trundling out of one of the rooms and whisked me downstairs but… ”

“What?”

“Well, I know it sounds stupid but I thought I caught a glimpse, around the attic door… ”

“Yes?”

“Well it looked like there were lightbulbs all the way around.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, like a mirror in a theatre.”

I didn’t know quite what to make of this new information so I began to relate to George exactly what had been happening, my suspicions, everything.

“I mean I didn’t mind that the poster had been defaced,” I added. “To tell the truth I was happy about it.”

“What? I don’t understand. Why?”

“Well the whole pantomime dame thing. It bring back too many unhappy memories.”

George laughed for a second before realising I was serious.

“What do you mean mate?” he asked.

“Well,” I was nervous, not sure how far to go. “We’ve been friends for a while now haven’t we?”

“Yes, must be knocking on for fifteen years.”

“Well, when I was a kid… ” I hesitated.

“Its okay, honestly,” George looked worried.

“You see, when I was a child there was an incident at the local theatre.”

“What sort of incident?”

“I had won a competition to go backstage and meet the cast after the performance. My teacher Mr Collins had taken me after the show, I must have been six or seven years old at the time. I remember walking down the narrow corridors backstage, the damp, peeling paint looking quite the opposite of the showbiz glitz I expected. We had gone to the dressing room door and Mr Collins knocked. There was no reply but I was excited and burst in to find Widow Twanky hanging from his stockings from the rafters. Dead.”

“Bloody hell.”

“The image of a suicidal cross dresser swinging right in front of me has hampered my enjoyment of Christmas ever since. “

“I’m not surprised.”

The next week I arrived at Mr Grimwald’s I noticed a change to the house, the usual steamed and dark windows had red velvet curtains drawn over them, something I had never noticed on either the inside or from the outside of the house. I knocked loudly on the door and after a few moments, Mr Grimwald appeared, inviting me inside. I could see there was something different about him but it wasn’t until I had finished my duties and was back outside that I realised what it was.

His complexion was usually very rosy, from his bald head to his collar line but there was a difference this time, his cheeks were unnaturally coloured. As I stumbled towards the van I became irrationally afraid of what might become of him, the same sick scenario from my childhood ringing around my mind. It couldn’t be, I told myself but made a mental note to speak to one of the health workers about possible causes for bright red circles on his cheeks. Perhaps he was simply unwell and after all I had a responsibility to look after our customers.

By my next visit, the Christmas season was in full swing with the streets daubed with coloured light bulbs and Christmas trees in every window and on every corner. It was with a real sense of unease that I mounted the steps to his house, unsure of what I would find inside. Whatever I expected couldn’t have prepared me for what I saw; a man in his seventies with rouged cheeks, a big ginger wig full of ringlets, a pair of frilly bloomers and to cap it all, completely bare-chested.

“Evening Gary,” he smiled. One of his front teeth had been blacked-out. “Do come inside.”

In a kind of shocked-daze I went about my business of unwrapping and heating, serving and vending before making hasty excuses and leaving. At least he was alive, I reasoned. As I reached the garden gate I turned to the house, unsure of whether I had seen what I believed I had seen and as I surveyed the house in the all too early darkness my attention was drawn to one of the windows on the second floor. Although there were no lights on in the window I could have sworn I saw a pair of hands clawing down the window, smearing the condensation. Just as quickly as this half-imagined scene had happened the streetlight illuminating the front of the house blinked out, shrouding me and the house in darkness leaving me with nothing but doubt and paranoia. I stood for a second, my skin crawling when, on the wind I seemed to here Mr Grimwald’s voice.

“Ooh, saucy!” he seemed to say.

I got in my van and drove away.

The next day, the morning papers were filled with the breaking news that actor ‘Neil Smart’ had gone missing, wife and kids were frantic, police were flummoxed for motive or whereabouts. Pantomimes around the region were placed on a state of high alert, bodyguards had been drafted in to protect these precious men in tights because Neil Smart was the seventh Widow Twanky to go missing this pantomime season. The press were having a field day, up until this point the police had managed to keep the whole thing under wraps, reasoning that no-one would really miss a few D-list celebrities but Neil Smart was too famous, they had to go public. Children’s hearts up and down the country were breaking as Dames fled from theatres without tight security, performances were cancelled, every man woman and child became a suspect and were frisked before performances. Even the matinees.