Carol's Christmas Tale

Short story

Carol writes:

So difficult to find the words to start a story. I have had to borrow someone's else's. Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was admitted and was available for public scrutiny. Mr Screwit admitted it. And Mr Screwit's name was good in the neighbourhood, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Bob Marley was as dead as a doornail and would sing and play the guitar no more.

Screwit was universally held to be a generous, benevolent man. Everybody said so, especially those that owed him money and didn't want their accounts called to book. Added to that he kept promising humbugs to the children. "Humbug," he'd say and when the children looked expectant he'd give his cheerful chuckle and repeat, "Christmas humbug" and they'd know they'd have to wait until the holiday season before they were given those delicious, strangely shaped, striped, peppermint sweets.

At the beginning of Christmas week, he'd dress up as saintly St Nicholas and sit the children of the neighbourhood on his knee and promise them all sorts of things. People knew Mr Screwit enjoyed this as he always had a big smile on his face. The children weren't quite so sure.

One of these children was called Tiny Tim. He didn't like being called that as he found it slightly demeaning but his parents told him that it would get bigger as soon as he got into 'puppetry' – he thought that was the word they used. He tended to believe what people told him so he was going to ask Father Christmas for a finger puppet and hoped he would understand.

Tiny Tim's father was Mr Bill Scratchit who was assistant manager to Mr Screwit (of Screwit and Scratchit plc, Ed. Carol) and was very attached to his employer. The relationship was very cordial, which, for those who don't know it, is an invigorating and stimulating drink, often diluted with water (Carol). Mr Screwit and Scratchit shared the drink, Screwit drinking the cordial part (which curiously enough sometimes seemed to smell of juniper berries) while Scratchit had the water. It was indeed an equal partnership.

Christmas Eve that year fell on December 24th. Nature had conspired to cause a very cold front (leading edge of a low pressure area, Carol) and thus, though seasonal greetings generally speaking were warm, the weather was bitterly cold. If it had been any warmer said the forecasters with their customary gloomy prognostication, it would probably snow, there would be blizzards and quite a few old age pensioners (sorry, senior citizens, Carol) might well die from hypothermia, flu, rheumatism, general grumpiness or some other such geriatric complaint.

The day being over, Bill Scratchit went home where he was greeted by his sixteen children of whom the smallest and runtiest of the litter was Tiny Tim. Also at the door was Scratchit's wife, understandably after all hose pregnancies a rather washed out woman who lived on a diet of cups of tea and aspirin and was called Mona, though not for obvious reasons because she was the friendliest woman you could hope to meet and always had a smile on her face – pale though it was.

"Merry Christmas," said Scratchit.

The children flung themselves on him and he went down under the onslaught, catching his elbow a nasty blow on the elephant's leg umbrella stand. (A bit of slapstick here for those that appreciate it. Carol)

"Dozy little bastards," said Scratchit, rubbing his funny bone. But he soon cheered up under the ministrations of Mona who plied him with sherry and mince pies.

"So where have you children been today?" he asked.

They answered en masse so that it was difficult to understand, but the general purport was that they'd been to see Father Christmas at Santa's Grotto in the local store. So that was where Screwit had been for the major part of the day.

"I asked him for a finger puppet," said Tiny Tim. "And you've no idea where he put his finger."

"Ho, ho, ho. He's a cheerful old card. I expect he gave you a lot of humbugs."

"Certainly did," said Benjamin, the oldest of the children, a strapping sixteen year old with plump cheeks and traces of an embryonic moustache. "And I told him where he could put them. He'll not try it on with me again."

"It tickled," said Tiny Tim, "but I quite liked it."

Meanwhile Screwit himself, the subject of their conversation, had gone home, the home he had shared with Bob Marley but which he now inhabited in lonely splendour.

There were traces of his defunct partner around the house, some shorn dreadlocks, a woollen Rasta cap. Some lines from a song drifted through Screwit's mind as he prepared his supper:

Excuse me while I light my spliff
Good GOD I gotta take a lift
From reality I just can't drift
That's why I am staying with this riff

and the chorus:

Easy skanking, skanking it easy
Easy skanking, skanking it slow

Screwit had never quite come to terms with 'skanking' and certainly doing anything 'easy and slow' went against the grain as far as he was concerned. Life was real and life was earnest, as Mr Longfellow had intimated, and it didn't do much good, whatever the purpose, to take it slow and easy.

He (Screwit that is, not Longfellow, Carol) microwaved his meal; it saved time this way, time which could be more profitably spent in planning more 'generous' (and hopefully lucrative) projects, like financing a home for wayward boys who would obviously be so much better off if they were taken from the streets and properly organised.

After consuming a carbonara consisting of free range egg pasta, smoked bacon and a sprinkling of flat leaf parsley in a luxuriously creamy mascarpone sauce, finished with shavings of Grana Padano cheese (Taste the difference, exhorts Mr Sainsbury), Screwit ensconced himself at his desk in the sitting room, an exact copy of the one in his office at work, and drew up plans.

It was while he was doing this that he heard, or thought he heard strains of music drifting through the night air. Could it be a band of Christmas carollers? Always prepared, Screwit quickly placed some small denomination coins on the coal shovel and toasted them on the fire. It would amuse everyone when he threw them down and the rosy-cheeked singers burnt their fingers as they attempted to pick them up. However, when he went to the window and looked down he couldn't see anyone and the music, now he came to think of it, wasn't really Christmas carol type, more Caribbean reggae, and Screwit could swear he smelled more than a hint of ganja in the air.

He poured himself a generous portion of Old Sporran triple malt whisky and sipped it while he made notes. He lit one of his special cigarettes and popped one of his special pills which always encouraged his imaginative talents.

'Collect boys off the street', he wrote, 'house them in empty building' – lately Mrs Figgins Olde Time Bordello – (now shut down, Carol), 'advertise their availability as rest room attendants, valets and bus boys – alter nomenclature as necessary for British clients'. (The following famous people, it is alleged, also worked as busboys – Ho Chi Minh, Johnny Depp, Jake Gyllenhaal amongst others. There is hope for all of us who are in menial jobs, Carol.)

So absorbed was Screwit in this pleasurable activity that he failed to observe how the time went, how the old clock on the mantel shelf ticked away the minutes, and eventually the hours, until midnight. It was only when the Town Hall clock boomed its way through twelve and there were distant sounds of cheering from the Town Square that he realised it was actually Christmas Day.

The fire had almost burnt itself out and the remains of the last log fell with a few fitful sparks into the grate. Screwit shivered. He must stop this planning, fascinating though it might be; it was time for bed. Just one more cigarette, or maybe a hash brownie, and a final pill.

He climbed the stairs not for the first time feeling just a little bit strange. Perhaps he'd overdone the whisky. (I'm not sure how you imagine him, Carol speaking BTW. Don't mix him up with that other character invented by Mr C. Dickens who was old and raddled and really nasty. Uncle Screwit was quite young; it was only his business acumen and dabbling in the affairs of the Town that gave him this air of superiority and strength of character. He was in fact quite personable at a casual glance. And his name was Darren, not Ebenezer.)

In the bedroom he slumped down onto the bed. "Merry Christmas, Bob," he said.

"Thank you, man," said a voice.

Screwit shook his head to get rid of the cobwebs which seemed to be fogging his mind and indeed his eyesight. Surely over there, in the corner of the room stood a familiar figure, tall, thin, dark complexioned, dreadlocks hanging from under a yellow, red and green Rasta woollen cap. There was a strange, almost transparent look to him. Screwit's jaw dropped comically.

"Still up to your old tricks," said the vision if that's what it was.

"Only covertly," said Screwit, struggling to regain his composure.

"What's the latest scam? Still doing the Santa Claus?"

"That's a regular. Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without it."

"And what's this about boys off the streets?"

"You've been looking over my shoulder," said Screwit, genuinely outraged.

"I don't need to look over no shoulders, man. I can see everything you do."

Screwit studied the shape closely. "You seem to be talking rather differently these days – less Caribbean, more Metropolitan."

"Ah tend to consort with a different class of beings these days."

"Better?"

"Ah didn't say that!"

Screwit tried to pull himself together. "Are you a drug-induced hallucination?"

"Ah ain't no duppy, man." (That means, I'm not a ghost. Carol) "Just a prick of conscience from the past."

A prick from the past, pondered Screwit. If only! For sadly Marley's almost transparent appearance didn't bode good for any real solid extrusion. "And what are you here for?" he asked.

"It's your last chance to change your ways," said Marley.

Screwit was astounded. "Change my ways?"

"You're hiding your bad nature under a cloak of generosity. Now is the time for change. Be really generous, treat Bill Scratchit properly, for instance. Why not go round to the Scratchit household with gifts so that they have a really merry Christmas."

"Will that endear me to their eldest son, Benjamin?" asked Screwit, still in a semi-woozy state.

"That's another thing," said Marley. "You really must keep your hands off the street boys."

"But for their own good . . ."

Marley gave a hollow laugh which matched his hollow body for Screwit could see right through him, clear through to the old long case clock on the other side of the room. It was only then that Screwit started to become seriously worried.

"What do you want with me?" he asked.

Marley looked mournfully at him and clanked his chains (Yes, Carol speaking, somehow or other he's got hold of some chains now. It adds to the atmosphere.)

"You've gotta change your attitude, man. (This is the serious bit so let's get it over quickly, Carol) Here's your chance to come over as a good guy and stop being such a mean conniving old bastard sheltering under a cloak of respectability."

"Otherwise?"

"Do you want to end up like me?"

Screwit looked at the apparition in front of him. There were clear signs of suffering in his haggard features. For a moment Screwit became seriously alarmed. What would it be like, he wondered, to wander round the world in a semitransparent state, clanking chains and predicting dire consequences? But then he fell back on his old mantra which had stood him in such good stead in the past.

"Bah! Humbug," he said.

Marley sighed and slowly disappeared. "I could send some friends," were his last words, "but I guess it would be no use."

In the morning Screwit felt revivified. My, how he'd give Bill Scratchit hell for taking a day off. How he'd screw his debtors for allowing their loans to extend into the New Year. What fun life would be.

Change! He'd show Marley 'change'! It would need more than a drug-induced hallucination to turn him into a philanthropic softie. Cut down on the Old Sporran whisky, he told himself.

He looked out into the cold morning. There was a thick layer of snow on the ground and on the rooftops but the air was fresh and crisp and Screwit felt it good to be alive. A solitary figure crossed the street outside leaving a trail of footprints in the snow. It was one of the street boys.

"Boy," shouted down Screwit from his upstairs casement.

The boy looked up. He was a well-set lad with broad shoulders and an amiable grin.

"Boy, has the butcher in the next street at the corner still got his prize turkey hanging there?"

"The one as big as me?" asked the boy.

An intelligent boy, a remarkable boy. He'll do well in my new house for boys off the street. He'll be very popular, thought Screwit. "Yes, that's the one," he said.

"Do you want me to buy it for you?" asked the boy.

"Heavens, no," said Screwit. "I just wanted to be sure that he hadn't been able to sell it. He'll soon go out of business or need a sum of money which I can supply at exorbitant rates of interest."

He made a mental note to keep in touch with the boy and slammed the window shut causing a small avalanche of snow from the roof to fall on the boy's upturned face.

* * * * * *

"I think Mr Screwit's now showing his true colours," said Scratchit sadly after a particularly hard day at the office..

"Are they pretty?" asked Tiny Tim.

(I despair of the boy, Carol)
 

Date started: Thu, Sep 27, 2007
Date finished: Thu, Nov 22, 2007
Words: 2,383