The Haystack (11 page)

O
N THE FRIDAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS
, we got a lift up to Matamata in one of the milk lorries to do our special shopping. I’d emptied my money box, and bought Dad a pair of socks. I would have knitted them, too, but didn’t know how to turn the heel, nor how to knit on several pairs of needles all at once.

We got home, had tea late, and Dad brought out another of Mummy’s old books, a big brown one without pictures.

“A Christmas Carol,
by Charles Dickens,” he said. “We’ll read a bit each night and finish it on Christmas Eve. ‘Stave One. Marley’s Ghost.’”

“What’s a stave?”

“Like a verse of a song.”

“We’re going to sing,” I told Milly.

“It’s a story.”

“Then why’s it called a Christmas carol?”

“Because it’s for reading at Christmas. And there’s bells.” Dad blew out his cheeks, held his arms out by his sides, and turned himself into a bell. He swung back and forth and did the dings, and I blew out my cheeks and swung and did the dongs.

Milly opened her eyes wide at Scrooge.

“‘Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!’”

Milly stared at Dad enjoying himself reading about Scrooge.

“‘Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.’”

“‘Solitary as an oyster.’ “ I wiggled my toes so the blanket moved, and Milly pounced and glared.

“‘Nobody liked Scrooge, and he liked nobody.’ “ Dad read about blind men’s dogs tugging their owners into doorways, away from Scrooge.

“He’s awful.”

“You wait.” Dad read about the clerk having to warm himself at the candle, because Scrooge wouldn’t let him have a decent fire in his office. Scrooge refused to go to his nephew’s on Christmas Day; he wouldn’t even wish him a Merry Christmas, but said “Bah!” and
“Humbug!” That night, he was visited by Marley’s ghost, who warned him he was going to be haunted by three spirits.

“‘Humbug!’ Scrooge tried to say.”

“Bah!” I said. It felt good saying it. “Humbug!”

“Bah! Humbug!” Dad said, and we repeated it a couple of times.

“It’s got a ring to it,” said Dad. “Like the bell that rang for Marley’s ghost.” We laughed and did some more dinging and donging.

“Are you going to read us some more?”

“I’ve got to work in the morning. Stave Two tomorrow night.”

“Bah!” I told Dad, and he told me “Humbug!”, and pulled out the light.

“Don’t forget to kiss me.”

“Bah! Humbug!” he said.

“And Milly, too, and you’ve got to say, ‘Bah! Humbug!’ to her.”

I listened to him making himself a cup of tea. The last thing I heard, he was saying “Bah! Humbug!” to the kettle to make it boil.

The following night, the Ghost of Christmas Past took Scrooge back to see himself as a lonely little boy, and showed him the young woman who once loved him, but who married somebody else and now had children of her own.

Dad stopped reading. “I think Scrooge’s starting to feel sorry for being as solitary as an oyster.”

“It serves him right,” I said, “for making his clerk warm his hands over a candle.”

The next night, Dad was tired, but Milly and I got into bed early and cried and said we wouldn’t go to sleep till he read us the next bit.

Scrooge woke again, and the Ghost of Christmas Present, this time, showed him his clerk Bob Cratchit with his poor little son. “‘Alas for Tiny Tim,’” Dad read, “‘he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame.’”

“Callipers,” I said. “He had the infantile.”

Dad read about how Scrooge heard that he was known as the Ogre of the Cratchit family, and that Tiny Tim would die if he wasn’t helped.

“Poor Tiny Tim,” I told Milly and covered her ears so she wasn’t frightened by a hooded phantom. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, it showed Scrooge how nobody missed him after he died, and how Bob Cratchit cried because Tiny Tim died. Milly was so upset, she didn’t want to hear any more.

“It hasn’t happened yet,” Dad told us. “It’s Christmas Yet to Come, remember.”

Then the phantom showed Scrooge a grave with his own name written on it, “Ebenezer Scrooge”, and again we both said, “Serves him right.” And the Ghost of
Christmas Yet to Come shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled into Scrooge’s bedpost. Milly didn’t like that idea, so I shouted “Bah! Humbug!” to cheer her up.

“Stave Five tomorrow night,” said Dad. “For Christmas Eve.”

“There’s a Christmas present for Milly in there,” Mr Cleaver said next morning, giving me our parcel and a calendar. “A mouse-sized bit of rump steak.” He tore off a length of brown paper. “That’s for wrapping your father’s present,” he said. “And Milly’s.”

Mr Bryce wished me a Merry Christmas and said something about a secret.

“I’m having trouble keeping Dad’s present a secret. He keeps wanting to know what he’s getting.

“I said I’m not going to tell him because he’ll just cry once he knows and say I shouldn’t have told him, and he’ll say it’s all my fault and he wants something else as well, to make up for knowing.”

“My father used to try that trick on me,” said the Kelly girl.

I wrapped Dad’s and Milly’s presents in Mr Cleaver’s paper, and tied them around with some string that Mr Bryce had snapped off on his finger for me. Milly’s present I put in the safe with her name on it, but Dad’s I hid. I knew him: he just couldn’t help himself.

Sure enough, he came in the door and said he’d give me a boiled lolly if I’d tell him what he was getting for
Christmas, but I shook my head.

“It’s no fun, if you know beforehand. There won’t be any surprise, and you’ll cry in the morning and say it’s all my fault, and that Santa Claus isn’t true.”

“You’re probably right,” Dad said, “even if you are very hard-hearted.” He blew his nose and pretended to wipe his eyes. “How about just a little look?” he begged, but Milly and I just laughed.

“I’m not really hard-hearted,” I said after tea, “not like Scrooge.”

“Bah! Humbug!” Dad said. “Jump into bed for the rest of
A Christmas Carol.
‘Stave Five. The End of It’,” he read, and Milly wriggled.

“You’re as bad as Dad,” I told her, “wanting to know what the ending is before we come to it.”

“Do you want to hear the rest of this story or not?” Dad grumbled.

Scrooge woke on Christmas morning, a changed man. He called out the window to a boy to run to the poulterer’s and get them to send the biggest turkey they had.

“The shops were open on Christmas Day?”

Dad nodded. “‘Come back with the man, and I’ll give you a shilling,’ Scrooge told the boy. ‘Come back with him in less than five minutes, and I’ll give you half-a-crown.’

“‘The boy was off like a shot.’ I’d be off like a shot,
too,” Dad said. “That’s more than I get paid at the factory.”

When the enormous turkey came, Scrooge sent it to the Cratchits in a cab pulled by a horse. He said “Merry Christmas” to everyone, gave money to the poor, and had Christmas dinner at his nephew’s. He was a changed Scrooge.

Next morning, he went to his office early, hoping to catch Bob Cratchit coming to work late. And he was: eighteen and a half minutes late. Instead of giving him the sack, Scrooge laughed and gave him a rise, told him to buy some coal for the fire, and helped Bob Cratchit with his struggling family. Best of all, he became a second father to Tiny Tim who didn’t die after all. And
A Christmas Carol
ended with Tiny Tim saying, “God Bless Us, Every One!”

“God bless us, every one,” I told Milly and hung a stocking on the foot of the bed. Dad sneaked in and tried to see his present, but we knew he was going to try that and only pretended to be asleep.

“If you don’t behave yourself at once, you’ll get nothing for Christmas,” we told Dad, and that fixed him.

“Bah!” he said to himself out in the kitchen. Milly and I grinned at each other. “Humbug!” he said.

“Did I hear you saying bah and humbug?” I called.

“I said ‘Car. A Humber.’ Can’t you hear it going along the street?”

I called in Mrs Dainty’s voice: “You make yourself a cup of tea and go to bed at once. Tomorrow’s Christmas, and you’re going to wake up a changed man.”

“Bah! Humbug!” Dad said as he shifted the kettle over the heat on the stove, but he whispered it so Milly didn’t hear him.

I
WOKE ON CHRISTMAS MORNING
, looked down at Milly, and saw somebody peeping at me over the foot of the bed. She wore a bonnet, her eyes were blue, and when I sat up I could see plaits of yellow hair.

Milly yawned as I knelt, and I realised she was jealous, trying to ignore the beautiful face smiling over the eiderdown. Its owner was standing on top of my old pram that Santa Claus must have shoved under her feet so she could watch me sleeping and smile when I woke. My stocking hung beside her, stuffed to the top.

“Hello. I’m Maggie, this is Milly, my cat, and I’m going to call you Aggie because I’ve always wanted somebody I could call that. I’ve been keeping the name for ages, just in case you came along, because it’s the same as mine, only without the M.”

“Hurgle?” somebody moaned from Dad’s room.

“Aggie!” I picked her up. As well as yellow plaits and
blue eyes, Aggie had red lips, black eyebrows, and wore a blue-checked gingham dress sprigged with tiny red flowers, and with a square neck and three rows of white zigzag ricrac right around it.

Her dress unbuttoned down the back. Underneath she wore white bloomers and a singlet, and white socks and red button shoes on her feet. “‘Dandy-dance-by-night shoes,’” I told her. “If I had shoes like yours, I’d go dancing every night till they wore out, like ‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses’. I’ll read you the story.”

“Hurgle?”

On top of the stocking, there was a little pink cardigan with pearl buttons for Aggie, and with a chocolate wrapped in silver paper in both pockets.

“Hold up your hands and keep still while I put on your cardie, Aggie. That’s the way. Now, I’ll just do up these buttons.

“It’s still early, and it might seem warm to you, but there’s a cold wind outside, and it’d be downright silly to catch a chill on Christmas morning. When winter comes, I’ll finish the French knitting I started, and make you a warm hat like a tea cosy, and I’ll knit some peggy squares and sew them into a blanket for you.”

“Hurgle?”

I shushed Millie and Aggie, and had another look at the stocking. “How did Santa Claus know?”

“Hurgle!”

“Shhh.” I laid Aggie’s finger on Milly’s lips.

I found a long black tin of bright paints. One colour called Crimson Lake looked good enough to eat. There was a brush, and the lid was shaped so you could mix the paints with water without them running together and turning to mud. I loved paints, but there was only crayon at school, and crayon’s not as much fun.

Under the tin of paints was a whole bagful of boiled lollies, an orange, six Brazil nuts and seven hazel nuts stuffed right down into the toe. It was the most stuffed-full stocking I’d ever seen.

Dad was still hurgling away, so I took everything to show him, and gave him his socks and scarf, and stuck Aggie in his face so he had to kiss her and say “Merry Christmas, Aggie”, and he put on his socks, wound his scarf round his neck, said they were all lovely, and groaned “It’s the middle of the night!”

He ate one of the boiled lollies, and that cheered him up because he went back to sleep without saying “Hurgle” again.

I got back into bed with Aggie beside me where she could see and put my arm around her. Milly climbed on my knee, and I read them “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” out of my mother’s old book of fairy tales. Aggie was much more interested than Milly who wasn’t a really good listener; she just pretended because she was jealous.

We came to the end of the story and Aggie clapped her hands.

“You’ve been such a good girl,” I told her, “I’m going to take you out for a walk, but we won’t take Milly, because she didn’t pay attention.”

Dad had made my pram out of a butter-box and some old pram wheels and painted it cream. I hadn’t played with it for ages, because I didn’t have anyone to go in it. Milly didn’t mind just lying in the pram but didn’t like being a baby. When I tried dressing her up and putting her in the pram, she always jumped out.

Aggie loved the pram. I arranged her yellow plaits on the little pillow, and she lay there and smiled up at me with her blue eyes.

“Since it’s Christmas morning,” I told Milly, “you can come if you like. It’s rude to yawn, you know; I hope you’re not going to be jealous. And it’s no good complaining: you’ve had every chance in the world to go for a walk, scores of times.” As I spoke, she poked out her tongue, so I called her a minx, one of Mrs Dainty’s favourite words.

“Just for that,” I said, “you can stay at home while we go for a nice walk, Aggie and me.”

“Your eyes are the colour of forget-me-nots,” I told Aggie as I pushed her out the gate.

Along Ward Street, Freddy Jones was sitting in front of his place, digging a hole in the footpath with a
bright green steam shovel. I would have pushed Aggie along to show her to him, but he stood up and shouted something rude about my pyjamas, so I stuck out my tongue, turned the pram, and walked back inside very dignifiedly. I didn’t show him my fangs and claws, just yelled “Bah! Humbug!” and slammed the gate hard.

“We don’t want to talk to people like that, do we?” Aggie smiled at me. “Just as well Mrs Dainty didn’t see me outside in my pyjamas.” I tucked in the tea towel I’d given Aggie for a blanket till I could knit one. “You’ll meet Mrs Dainty. She’s a proper caution. You never know what she’s going to disapprove of next. And she’s forever jumping around corners and banging into me.

“Smell the smoke? That’ll be Dad lighting the fire. We’ll help him get breakfast.

“Dad, I took Aggie for a walk in the pram, and Freddy Jones got a green steam shovel for Christmas, and he yelled out didn’t I have any clothes to wear, and I told him ‘Bah! Humbug!’ and he couldn’t think of anything to say back. Dad, do the kids down the pa have Christmas?”

“I suppose so.”

“Just like everyone else?”

“Most of their fathers don’t have jobs, so I don’t know what they’d get in their stockings.”

“I wonder what Peggy Wilson got from Santa Claus?”

Dad stirred the porridge. “Not much, probably, but
I’m sure Mrs Wilson would have something for her.”

“My old shoes?”

“Maybe. There’s a lot of kids won’t be getting much for Christmas with the Depression the way it is, and so many out of work.”

“What about swaggers?”

Dad shook his head. “How about stirring this while I have a shave since it’s Christmas Day.”

Aggie and I stirred the porridge, and Milly got the huff, and sat with her back to us. I put Aggie down on the floor, leaning against her, but she got up and walked away so Aggie fell over.

“There’s no call for that sort of behaviour,” I told Milly. “Christmas of all days.” Then I remembered she didn’t have a stocking and gave her the Christmas present from Mr Cleaver. She wasn’t very good at unwrapping, so I had to help her, and she rubbed herself against my hands and chewed her present while we ate our porridge.

We shook the mats outside after breakfast, swept the kitchen, kept the stove going, and killed the biggest cockerel. Aggie liked watching its head being chopped off, but she wasn’t much help with the plucking and didn’t like the smell of its insides. By the time we’d stuffed it, Dad said it looked the size of Scrooge’s turkey.

“Aggie doesn’t like cooked carrot,” I told Dad, “but she’ll eat a bit, seeing it’s Christmas. She says she hopes we’re not having cabbage and parsnip.”

“How about the pair of you running out to the garden, and picking us some peas?”

“Why aren’t we roasting potatoes with the chook?”

“Because we’re going to dig some new potatoes for Christmas dinner, and have fresh peas.”

Dad fiddled with the dampers so the oven would stay hot enough, and came out to the garden. “You haven’t picked many. Who’s been feeding her face?”

“Aggie’s never tasted peas straight out of the pod before.”

“Knock it off, Aggie!” Dad told her. “No more eating peas, or you won’t have any room for your Christmas dinner.”

“Let me?” I took the fork. “You know I love digging spuds.

“See the skins rub off?” I told Aggie. “That’s how you know they’re new potatoes. You wait till you taste them.”

I picked some mint to put in with the potatoes, and Dad said, “It’s Christmas, so set another place, just in case a starving traveller comes to the door.”

“Who’s coming?”

“We’ll see.”

“What if it’s a swagger? What say it’s Mr Rust?”

“Then we’ll bring him in and feed him.”