It isn’t intimate, and with the number of layers I’m wearing, there’s only the vague pressure of his hands touching my sides as he lifts me down effortlessly. I feel like Baby in Dirty Dancing in those few seconds I’m suspended in the air, like a gazelle, weightless and free, or a ballerina dizzy after too many pirouettes, as he transfers me from the narrow path to wide-open space next to a tree trunk, the post bag banging against his side like it weighs nothing. God knows how he can lift me and that without breaking a sweat.
The closeness brings his cologne into sharp focus, and I breathe in crisp leaves and it’s only the hint of almond that makes me realise it’s actually him and not the forestry around us.
My hands are on his arms and it takes a few moments for me to come back to the present and realise I’m on solid ground and Tav is patiently waiting for me to let go of him.
I step back guiltily, banging into the tree trunk and bringing an avalanche of snow splattering down all around me.
‘Because it’s Santa’s workshop.’ Tav answers the question I asked seconds ago, but my brain is so frayed by being close to him that it takes me a while to catch up. ‘It’s secret. Only very few children get to see behind the curtain and watch the elves making toys. It’s one of the most mysterious things about Christmas. It’s supposed to be shrouded in secrecy and magic.’
At the top of the path back up to the main road, a reindeer’s head appears over the holly bushes and peers down at me. ‘Is that Rudolph-slash-Clive again?’
Tav looks up from fiddling with a bundle of keys and grunts, and when Rudolph sees him looking, he dashes off, the sound of his hooves echoing into the distance.
‘See? You’re already starting to recognise them. I have no idea how he keeps getting out – none of the others do. It’s strange because he never goes far, and he always comes back.’ He unlocks the wide double door, etched with elegant scrolls and panes of red and green stained glass. “Santa’s Workshop” is carved over the entrance, and the outside is surrounded by a wooden fence with train carriages carved atop each post, now chipped and faded compared to the bright colours they once were. The doors grind and stall as Tav drags them haltingly open. The only thing missing is a flock of moths flying out of the dark, damp building, disturbed from years of slumber.
He steps back to let me through first, ducking at the last second before he clonks his head on yet another doorframe, and he lets the post bag slip off his shoulder and onto a wooden chair inside the door, sending up a cloud of dust that I wave my hand to disperse.
‘This is where the magic happened.’ Tav indicates the two rows of desks lined up next to each other like a conveyor belt, and I can instantly imagine them filled by a factory line of workers. At the moment, they’re mainly filled with cobwebs.
‘We had a married couple on staff who made all the elf costumes themselves, and running the workshop became their pet project. We used to have enough elves to fill these seats, and when children would come to visit, they’d see them sitting here painting train carriages or wooden dolls.’ He walks to the end of a desk and plunges his hand into a box. I half-expect him to come out with something responsible for all these cobwebs, but he pulls out a little train and a couple of carriages, the plain wood waiting to be painted by elves who no longer work here.
You can tell the room was once done up in primary colours, but the walls are faded and scuffed now. There are other parts of the building too, closed doors with signs on them. One reads “Presents”, the other reads “Storage”, and on the right of the room is a door with “Elf Workshop” on it, the wooden sign held up by only one corner now.
That level of detail hits me again. I’ve never visited a Christmas village before, but surely they don’t all stage actual Santa’s workshops so children can see their toys being put together?
‘This is exceptional,’ I murmur. It’s another of the many things that make the North Pole Forest seem out of this world.
‘Exceptional? Really?’ He doesn’t hide the surprise in his voice. ‘I thought you hated Christmas.’
‘Well, yeah, but the thought that’s gone into this …’ Something hovers at the edge of my mind about Tav’s attention to small things and eye for detail.
He smiles to himself and throws the wooden carriages he’s still holding in the air, and catches all three of them with one hand and deposits them back into the box.
‘Tav …’ I start, unable to take my eyes off his deft movements. ‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘All of this just to convince children Santa exists? Why so much effort?’
He watches me for a minute and then lifts his chin. ‘Go back outside and look in a window.’
I stomp back out into the snow and cup my hands around my eyes to block reflections and peer in a clear gap at the bottom corner of a stained-glass window depicting colourful presents.
‘You’ll have to use your imagination,’ Tav says. ‘Close your eyes.’
I roll them instead, and then do as he says.
‘Imagine being young again.’ He speaks louder so I can hear him from the outside but his voice stays soft, his Norwegian lilt coming out in his slow words. ‘Imagine tiptoeing up to that window and peeking through the only corner you were tall enough to see in. Imagine seeing row after row of elves working. The air smells of peppermint and the scent of freshly sanded wood, and the colours are bright and exciting and you don’t know where to look first.’
His voice is hypnotic and I have to blink a few times because I’m lost in the vision he creates.
‘Imagine you’re an older child on the verge of realising Santa is a fairy tale. It’s a significant moment in any child’s ageing process when they find out Santa isn’t real, and at that point, they lose a piece of their innocence and become one step closer to being a cynical adult like us. And you peek in this window and there can be no explanation for it other than Santa’s workshop, so you start to question all the things you’ve heard about Santa being a myth and you wonder … Could he be real and anyone who thinks otherwise just isn’t lucky enough to have seen a place like this yet?’
I feel like I’m waking from a trance when he stops speaking. His voice is so calming. Listening to it is like lying on your back in a tranquil lake while a gentle breeze nudges you slowly towards the shore.
I go back and lean in the doorway. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘You wouldn’t be smiling like that if you didn’t.’
My smile gets wider. ‘Okay, why Santa? Why not a room full of teeth to prove the existence of the tooth fairy?’
He laughs. ‘Firstly, that would be a remarkably macabre and disturbing sight, and secondly, everyone knows it’s the parents who put the coins under the pillow, and thirdly, Christmas is the best time of year. Everything feels more magical at Christmas, like the universe is already primed to help. Seriously, Sash.’ He shakes his head, his shaggy hair flipping sideways. ‘Santa is the most important thing anyone ever believes in. The most magical. The most impossible. Children need that sense of wonder in their lives. Every child deserves to think magic is real. Every adult deserves to have that to look back on. And for me, because it’s the most life-affirming thing in the world to see that wonder on a child’s face, to see children literally realise that magic is real, knowing it’s something they’ll remember forever, and I’m a part of that.’
He crosses the room and pushes open one of the other doors. It sticks, swollen with dampness, and when he shoves his entire weight against it, it opens with a sudden slide and crashes hard against something behind it, the bang reverberating through the floorboards. ‘This is one of the elf workshops.’
This room has workbenches and child-friendly tools hanging on hooks around the wall. It’s like being back in school and looking into the technology classroom all over again.
‘We’d have the wooden blanks of a few basic toys, and children could choose what they wanted to make, and the elves would help them put it together and sand it and
paint it. We also had elf art classes where kids could come and draw.’ He nods to the far wall, which displays a number of yellowing drawings with curled edges, showing children’s depictions of Santa and his reindeer.
The amount of effort that was put in here really is exceptional. I’ve never realised there are people in the world who care that much about children believing in Santa. And it makes me wonder something else too. ‘What about other families?’
A dark eyebrow quirks up as he looks at me.
‘You’re all about making the children who come here believe in magic, but I’m guessing this is quite an expensive trip. So many families aren’t able to afford it, or can’t take time off work or don’t want to travel … What about underprivileged children? The children who write letters like the ones I read yesterday? Arguably the children who need to believe in magic most of all?’
He’s quiet for a while before he answers. ‘I can’t change the world. All I can do is make my little corner of it the best it can be.’
I don’t know what I expected the answer to be, or what I’m getting at by asking. It just seems odd to put so much effort into making one place magical when there are thousands of letters from children who could really do with believing the world is a better place than it is.
Tav’s phone buzzes in his pocket and he pulls it out, looks at the screen, and then holds it out to show me. ‘He didn’t waste any time in posting those.’
On the screen is a Twitter post by my dad showing the photos I sent him – the selfie I took with the signpost yesterday, one as I walked towards the post office, and one I took from my cabin looking down onto Santa’s House. The accompanying tweet reads: “It’s December and Santa’s daughter has arrived to save Christmas! #NorthPoleForest #KeepingItInTheFamily #SantaClausIsComingToTown”
‘Save Christmas?’ My fingers brush his as I take the phone out of his hand.
The tweet makes a chill creep down my spine. ‘Did he only invite me here because he thinks my knowledge of hotels will somehow save this place?’
I appreciate that he doesn’t make any comment on the hotel bit. I’ve slipped up so many times that he’s obviously realised I’m not being honest about my job, and this is a perfect opportunity to confront me, but he doesn’t. ‘He invited you here because you’re his daughter and you hadn’t seen each other for three and a half years, and he had a brush with death.’
‘And this place just happens to be on its last legs and I just happen to be responsible for “turning around the fortunes of one of the biggest hotels in Britain”.’ I repeat Dad’s words from earlier. ‘Is that all he wants from me?’
‘I think …’ he says slowly, ‘he just wants you to love it here as much as he does.’
I’ve got to admit there’s something about a man who thinks before he speaks and doesn’t blunder in blindly offending everyone.
‘It’s okay to admit you like it here, you know. I get why you’re worried about Percy – I am too – but it’s just us here. You can say something nice with no consequences. I won’t tell him.’
There’s a hint of mischief in his voice that makes me smile despite myself. ‘It’s a beautiful place, Tav. Perfect, even, back in the day. But budgets run out for a reason, and my dad’s plans to do the place up have been foiled by his health. That isn’t going to change. If anything, after a heart attack, it’s going to get worse …’
I sigh and step away from Tav. Despite the sawdusty smell of the workshop, his fresh almondy cologne is still in my nose and it might be clouding my judgement. ‘Maybe there’s a solution that doesn’t involve selling it. What about renting it out?’
‘Unfeasible.’
‘Why? If we could get tourists back, get a loan or something to cover the repair work and a new marketing campaign, and then it could pay for itself on a monthly basis. What about you? You obviously love it, you don’t want to see it sold, and you practically run the place anyway. If it made more money, enough to cover a rent fee every month, why couldn’t you rent it? Dad would be happy leaving it in your hands – someone he trusts and knows will keep it as it is. That could be a good compromise.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
I stare at him but I have absolutely no doubt that he isn’t going to elaborate on why it isn’t that simple. ‘Because you’re not as gullible as Dad?’
‘What?’
‘What I said yesterday about how the old owner saw him coming. Whoever it was must’ve set out to take advantage. He’s a nice man – too nice. Too gullible. He’ll believe anything. He’s a nightmare with phone scams and those fake phishing emails. Whoever owned this place really unloaded a deadweight. Manipulated him into buying it then jumped ship at exactly the right moment, and let my dad foot the bill of watching it sink.’
Tav scoffs. ‘If anything, he coerced the old owner into selling. They thought he would save it and above all else, they wanted it saved.’
‘You knew them then?’
‘I’ve worked here for fifteen years.’ His tone is cold and clipped again, and he shoves a hand through his hair. ‘Come on, we should go.’
He goes to pull the wooden door shut, but it gets stuck again. He yanks it and it crashes into the frame with such a bang that it shakes the whole building. From inside the room, there’s the unmistakable clatter of something big and heavy falling over. Tav uses his shoulder to shove the door open again, and we peer back into the room. The heavy wooden cabinet the door crashed into earlier is on the floor, its cupboard doors open and bent backwards and its drawers have slid across the room and all manner of supplies are spilling out.
‘What is all this stuff?’
‘Leftover stock from the elf workshops.’ He lifts the cabinet back upright like it weighs nothing and shifts it further along the wall. ‘I ordered too much and visitors stopped coming long before the stock ran out. So it’s just here, waiting I guess, in the hopes people will come back one day.’
His sadness is audible again at the sight of the chaos that’s spilled out. There are sets of paints and brushes, packets of colouring pens and pencils, and Christmas colouring books. Blank wooden craft shapes ready to be painted in festive designs. Boxes of what look like Christmas cracker toys.
Tav’s already started gathering them up, and I crouch down to help, but he holds a hand up. ‘I’ve got it, Sash. I know where everything goes. Won’t be a minute.’
He sounds embarrassed by the fact I’ve seen all this, and it doesn’t seem like I’ll do any good by insisting on helping, so I wander back into the main workshop. I peer into the box at the edge of the desk that Tav got the carriages out of earlier, and it’s overflowing with wooden trains. There’s an excess of everything here.
I go over to the door and take breaths of air so cold it feels like my tonsils are being frozen on contact. My hand brushes against the “Posten” bag on the chair where Tav dumped it, and I take out a random envelope.
I tear it open and read the letter from a little boy in the UK who politely requests that Santa give his present to his little brother because his mum has told him they don’t have much money for presents this year and he thinks his little brother deserves two gifts.
A feeling tingles at the back of my neck that has nothing whatsoever to do with the ice-cold breeze stealing in, and everything that’s happened this morning clicks into place.
‘Tav!’ I run back across the room and into the workshop. ‘Can we send some of this stuff out?’
He’s standing wide-legged and bending down to gather up packets of colouring pencils and sketchbooks and he looks up when I stumble in.
‘We have all this stuff we don’t need, we have a treaty with the post office that allows us to post anything free of charge, there’s a load of packaging materials behind the counter in the post office, and we’ve got letters from kids whose families haven’t got money for presents.’ I wave the letter around. ‘It won’t cost us anything, and it’ll make use of stuff that’s just sitting here.’
&nbs
p; Tav pushes the armful of art supplies back into the cupboard and takes the letter from my hand. I can’t tear my eyes from him as he reads it, mesmerised by the way his smile starts out small and gradually grows until his whole face is lit up.
‘Coming here is the holiday of a lifetime,’ I say in a rush. ‘Parents who are struggling to put food on the table can’t even contemplate going on holiday, but their kids still write to Santa. They still share their thoughts and feelings and secrets with Santa. They have as much right to believe in magic as the children whose families can afford to take trips to Norway in December. We can reach people who can’t get here. Kids who need something to make Christmas special. Kids who need to be reminded there’s good in the world. That someone’s reading their letters. That someone cares.’
‘You want to start replying to the letters?’
‘Yes!’ I’m surprised by how excited my voice is. ‘Not all of them, obviously. Not the ones that are demanding lists of toys. But some of them, the children who send these heartbreaking letters and you feel so helpless reading them because there’s nothing you can do …’
He’s watching me with a bemused smile and I don’t know if he’s impressed or thinks I’m two ants short of a picnic, so I carry on. ‘I know we can’t do much, but what if we sent a little box of goodies to children who need it? A Christmas care package from the North Pole? Something that might be the only gift they get this year. Nothing extravagant – just some of that stuff.’ I point to the cupboard. ‘Something to let kids know someone cares about their lives. That letters to Santa actually mean something – they don’t disappear into the ether of the post office never to be seen again. There’s people like you in this little corner of the Arctic Circle who work really hard to make kids believe in magic. We can do a lot of good with stuff we’ve already got …’ I trail off when I realise I’m practically hopping from one leg to the other and gesticulating with my hands like I’m trying to ward off a swarm of particularly lively bees. ‘For God’s sake, Tav, say something!’
The Post Box at the North Pole: The perfect cosy and uplifting Christmas romance to curl up with in 2021! Page 13
