“I am asleep boy, fast asleep and have been so these past eighty six years” replied Margaret as she slumped down into the chair.
As he regained his composure, David took a closer look at the lady sat before him. In the now dim light of the room her skin appeared an almost deathly pale and her dyed red hair was wild and unkempt as if it had been ruffled by a pair of rough hands. He noted the handkerchief still tied around her head as it had been earlier in the evening. What was strange however, was that not once, even while speaking, did Margaret open her eyes.
“Come now!” said David in a stern tone, still laced with fear. “What do you want with me?”
“Much!”- replied Margaret, “no doubt about it.”
“What on earth is the matter with you? David replied “This is surely a bad dream, brought on by the stress of the day” He shook his head as if trying to revive himself.
“You don’t believe in me” observed Margaret.
“I do not” said David.
“What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?”
“I don’t know,” said David.
“Why do you doubt your senses?” Margaret enquired. In actual fact, David knew he wasn’t dreaming. He hoped that the pretense might give the Lady a chance to retreat so that they could forget the whole episode. He had heard whispers about Margaret’s strange behaviour of late, but this was the first time he had witnessed it himself. If the truth be told, seeing his great hero acting in such an odd manner filled David with alarm.
David placed his hands on the arms of his chair and pushed himself up, rising slightly as if to leave. As his bottom left the seat, he was met with a cold hard SLAP! across his face, courtesy of the Lady Thatcher.
David fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.
“Mercy!” he said. “Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?”
“Man of the worldly mind!” replied Margaret, “do you believe I am here or not?”
“I do,” said David. “I must. But why do you behave so? and why do you come to me?”
“It is required of every man and woman,” Margaret returned, “that the spirit of kindness within them should walk abroad among their fellows, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned. In the twilight years it is doomed to watch the world pass by —oh, woe is me!—and witness what it cannot share, for it is trapped by a character it set in stone! Oh how it sees what it might have shared on earth; the good it might have done and turned to happiness!”
Margaret raised a cry, and shook her bony white hands in the air. All the while her eyes remained firmly shut.
“Your mind is fettered Lady” said David trembling. “Tell me why?”
“I wear the chain of cruelty I forged in life,” replied Margaret. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?”
David trembled more and more.
“Or would you know,” pursued Margaret, “the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It is nearly as long and heavy as mine and you labour on it still!”
“Margaret” he said, imploringly. “Dear old Lady Margaret, tell me more. Speak comfort to me!”
“I have none to give,” Margaret replied. “It comes from other regions, David Cameron, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. But look at me David - I cannot rest, I am not at peace. My spirit never walked beyond the confines of the halls of power—mark me!— my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our party’s poison; so now only weary journeys lie before me!”
“Poison?” enquired David cowering, “But how can you call our beautiful ideas poison?”
“Oh! Captive bound, imprisoned fool!” cried Margaret ”You have no idea that the spirit of any person even if it spends every moment trying to spread kindness, in whatever small manner - will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness and goodness. You have no idea that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! But I do! Oh! How I do!”
“But you were always a good lady of business, Margaret,” faltered David, who now began to apply this same principle to himself.
“Business!” cried Margaret, wringing her hands. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, tolerance, and compassion, were, all, my business. The dealings of my politics never once dealt with my true business!”
“At this time of the rolling year,” Margaret said, “I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of my fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!”
David was very much dismayed to hear Margaret going on at this rate, and began to shake a little.
“Do you know” Margaret continued, “the greatest happiness that I have contributed to other people’s lives, throughout my entire existence is through my participation in the invention of Mr. Whippy Ice Cream!”
David smiled nervously “You tease me Lady Thatcher, you tease me” he said. “It is indeed a delicious treat but hardly your greatest achievement; you’re simply trying to inject a little joviality into my stressful day.” He let out a feeble, nervous laugh.
Suddenly Margaret sprung forward and pressed David to the floor. She stopped with her nose just a few inches from his. “Do you know boy, how the ancients prevented their leaders from becoming despots?”
“No” said David who was pinned motionless, both by shock and by the old lady’s surprising strength.
“They fed them empathy-inducing remedies; to make sure that they never lost touch with the plight of their subjects - that’s how!” She once again stuck two fingers into his mouth. David had a taste of the same sickly sweet flavour he’d noticed when he kissed Margaret’s hand earlier.
David pushed Margaret off and staggered to his feet. He wiped a hand across his mouth. “Madam, I think you have gone quite mad.” He led out another nervous titter of laughter.
“Qui rides? Boy? QUI RIDES? Why do you laugh? Look at me! I have no peace! My only solace comes from these remedy sweets my dead friend Albert Hoffman left me.” Margaret looked mournfully at her lap where she fingered a small open tin box. David recognised it as the one he had seen her hide under her pillow earlier.
“Lady Thatcher, please!” David exclaimed. “This is highly inappropriate - I am more than happy to have you here at number 10 but this is highly unorthodox behaviour! I really think…..”
“Hear me!” cried the Margaret. “My time is nearly gone.” She got to her feet and raised her hands in the air.
“Ok I will,” said David cowering and raising his hands to his face. “But don’t be hard upon me Margaret, Please”.
“I am here to-night to warn you David that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate.”
“You were always my great teacher,” said David. “Thank you!”
“You will be haunted,” resumed Margaret, “by Three Spirits.”
David’s face fell even further.
“Dear Lord, is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Margaret?” David demanded, in a faltering voice.
“It is.”
“I—I think I’d rather not,” said David.
“Without their visits,” said Margaret, “you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls one.”
“Couldn’t I take them all at once, and have it over?” hinted David.
“Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more and I dearly hope, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!”
As Margaret uttered these last words two of her nurse maids rushed into the room. “O thank god!” the first maid uttered “There you are Lady Thatcher.
”
Margaret suddenly opened her eyes and looked at the maid. “Where am I?” she looked down at David who was sat cowering on the floor “What are you doing in my chambers at this time of night?”
“Prime Minister, I am so sorry” offered the second maid. “She has been wandering off in the night quite frequently of late, I am so, so sorry. Is there anyone we can call for you?”
“No, no, I’m fine” replied David quietly. His confused gaze was all the while fixed upon Margaret. The Lady Thatcher was herself looking around the room as if greatly disorientated. She did not resist or protest as the nurses helped her up and then led her out into the corridor. David followed them out onto the large balcony of number ten and watched the trio walk away down the hall. The sickly sweet taste from Margaret’s fingers lingered upon his palate and he wondered for a moment just what on earth she had put in his mouth.
From the top of the balcony he could see the great staircase of Number 10, above whose steps were hung the portraits of all the Prime Ministers of the past. Whereas previously standing in this position had filled David with a strong sense of pride and entitlement, he was now filled with an unnerving feeling of prodigious dread. Many of the faces in the portraits seemed twisted out of their usual facades of poise and authority into grotesque grimaces of pain and distress. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, but had lost the power forever.
David walked back into his chambers and shut the door. Whether it was from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or the disturbing conversation of the Lady Thatcher, or the lateness of the hour – he was completely exhausted. Much in need of repose; he went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.
STAVE TWO
The First of The Spirits
When David awoke, it was so dark, that looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavouring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of the great clock in the hall struck the three quarters past the hour. So he lay awake and listened for the hour to see what time it was.
To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped. Twelve! It was surely past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have got into the works. Twelve!
He touched the illumination button of his bedside alarm, to correct this most preposterous chronometer. The numbers glowed in their usual luminous green just as the minute turned from twenty three fifty-nine to four zeros.
“Why, it isn’t possible,” said David, “that I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It isn’t possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon!”
The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and groped his way to the window. He had to rub the frost off the glass with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he could see anything; and could even then see very little. All he could make out was that it was still very foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the world. This was a great relief.
David went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he was; and the more he endeavoured not to think, the more he thought.
Margaret’s behaviour bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after mature enquiry, that it was all a misunderstanding, or a brief delirium in Margaret brought on by an infection in her waters or even just the strains of old age, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through, “What on earth had got into Margaret and was she being serious or not?”
David lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters more, when he remembered, all of a sudden, that Margaret had warned him of a further visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until it was at least after one.
The minutes that passed were so long, that he was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear.
“Ding, dong!”
“A quarter past,” said David, counting.
“Ding, dong!”
“Half-past!” said David.
“Ding, dong!”
“A quarter to it,” said David.
“Ding, dong!”
“The hour itself,” said David, triumphantly, “and nothing has happened!”
He spoke just before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy: One. All of a sudden, light filled the room and in an instant, and the curtains of his bed were suddenly drawn back.
The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. Not the curtains at his side, nor the curtains at his back, but those in his direct line of sight. David sat up and found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing, in spirit, at your elbow.
It was a strange figure—like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural lens, which gave him the appearance of being far away, and being shrunk to a child’s proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and had a tender glow in its skin. The arms were very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, which were most delicately formed, were, like its arms, bare. It wore a shirt of the purest white; and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt with a beautiful shining clasp. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand. The strangest thing about it though was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, which illuminated its whole body and everything around about. Under its arm the spirit held a cap which it appeared it could use, if it so wished, to extinguish the light that came from about its head.
“Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?” asked David.
“I am!”
The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.
“Who, and what are you?” David demanded.
“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
“Long Past?” inquired David: observant of its dwarfish stature.
“No. Your past.”
Perhaps, David could not have told anybody why, if anybody could have asked him; but he had a strong desire to see the Spirit in his cap; and begged him to be covered.
“What!” exclaimed the Ghost, “would you so soon put out, with your cowardly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough that you are one of those whose behaviour made this cap, and force me through hundreds of years to wear it low upon my brow!”
David actively denied all intention to offend, or any knowledge of having willfully “bonneted” the Spirit at any period of his life. He then made a bold to inquiry as to what business brought him there.
“Your welfare!” said the Ghost. “And I daresay, the welfare of your country!”
David expressed himself much obliged, but could not help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been more conducive to both ends. The Spirit must have heard him thinking, for it said immediately:
“Your redemption, then. Take heed!”
It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently by the arm.
“Rise! and walk with me!”
--
It would have been in vain for David to plead that the weather and the hour were not adapted to going outside; that his bed was warm, and the thermometer a long way below freezing; that he was clad but lightly in his slippers, dressing-g
own, and nightcap; and that he could feel a cold creeping upon him at that time. The grasp, though gentle, was not to be resisted. He rose: but finding that the Spirit made towards the window, clasped its robe in feeble resistance.
“I am a mortal,” David protested, “and liable to fall if you lead me out of that window.”
“Bear but a touch of my hand there,” said the Spirit, laying it upon his heart, “and you shall not fall!”
As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood upon an open country road, with fields on either side. The city had entirely vanished. Not a trace of it was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished with it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow upon the ground.
A Christmas Cameron Page 4
