“Have you finished Sam?” she asked without looking up.
“Yes” replied the little girl putting down her crayon and proudly surveying the letter.
“Right, well go and put it under the tree then” said her mother still concentrating on the scrubbing. The little girl jumped down from her chair and ran into the front room of the house. Under the largest window stood a small, decorated plastic tree, perhaps just taller than the girl herself but placed on a white plastic stool to add extra height. The girl placed the note at the foot of the stool before running back to the kitchen and standing in the doorway. Her mother turned her head without taking her hands out of the sink. “Ok, off to bed then. Or Father Christmas won’t come.”
“But Daddy’s not back yet” protested the little girl.
“Never mind. Off to bed with you now - no arguments.” The corners of the little one’s mouth curled downwards in a sad expression but a stern look from her mother and the threat of an absent Father Christmas quickly overcame her resistance and she scaled the small flight of stairs up to her room.
Shortly after, the turning of a key in the front door of the house heralded the return of the girls’ father. A tall, stocky man of more than six feet, with short cropped black hair stepped into the house. He closed the door against the great chill outside and removed his heavy winter coat and scarf and hung them on the set of hooks behind the front door. Upon hearing his entry into the house, without saying a word, his wife wiped her wet hands on her apron before slipping on a single oven glove. She opened the door to the small oven and removed a covered dish which she placed on the kitchen table.
Now, it has been said, on more than one occasion, by more than one person, that when poverty or its threat descends – it is very much like the experience of a sudden grief. A great grey fog descends whose dampness is the fear and anxiety of the present and whose greyness sucks the vibrancy of colour from any hope for the future. If the father carried this fog about himself alone when he entered the house, as soon as his wife looked at the expression upon his face, it came to cover them both.
“What’s happened?” asked the wife.
“It’s over” he replied. He pulled out a chair until it was well away from the table and sat down heavily. Leaning forward, he rested both his elbows on his knees and fixed his gaze on the floor. “We finished the negotiations this evening. There is no way round it, 1st of January the plant’s closing for good”.
“Well didn’t you fight? Didn’t you argue? Did you tell them you’d all take a cut? Or work every other week? – you said you thought they’d go for one of those!”
“We offered them every possible alternative to closing, short of working for free”. Still his gaze remained fixed to the floor. “But it’s not just us – this is the situation up and down the country; no-one can secure any backing – from anywhere.”
“I don’t care about the rest of the country!” she shouted. “What the hell are we going to do?” as she spoke she became more and more frantic. Unaccustomed to seeing a person in such a state of distress, David looked away feeling decidedly unsettled.
“I’ll find something”
“No you won’t!” shouted the wife. “It’s all over the news John! There are millions of people in your position looking for something. It’s over.” She placed her hands over her face and began to sob.
John stood up and walked over to his wife. He stood by her side. She was at least a foot shorter than him and seemed in that moment even smaller. He began to place an arm around her shoulder but as soon as he touched her she shrugged, pushing him away. “Don’t” she said.
All of a sudden, a great white light shone in through the kitchen window as if all the light of dawn were rushing in at once. Once the glare had settled, David could see that the scene had changed. The young girl along with her mother and an elderly man and woman were sat around the table which was laid out with a small Christmas Dinner. John was stood at the head of the table, his head bowed in prayer.
“Dear Lord, we thank you for the blessing of this Christmas spent together and we pray that the coming year will bring opportunities for…”
“I can’t do this” interrupted his wife. “I’m sorry” she glanced across at the little girl before getting up from the table and running upstairs. John raised his head just in time to see his wife’s small frame disappear through the kitchen door. He looked at his daughter and felt that he could perceive in slow motion, the movement of every individual little muscle in her face as her expression changed from the innocent childish excitement of Christmas day, into anxious bewilderment. He gently placed a hand upon her head and forced a smile as he ruffled her hair before following his wife upstairs.
“John, what on earth?” his elderly mother began to call after him as he left the room.
As he watched the events unfold, David was crept upon by a strange feeling. He felt for some reason like a person who had just had a long hidden, dark secret accidentally revealed leaving him naked and exposed.
“Come” said the ghost and he led David up the stairs. In a small bedroom at the back of a house, John watched his wife as she roughly removed her clothes and other belongings from their drawers and packed them into an old brown suitcase that lay open on their bed.
“You don’t have to do this” John said in a quiet voice. “What about Sam?”
“I can’t go back to being poor John” her eyes were wet with tears, which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past. “I need someone who can look after me – look after Sam. I’ll go and stay with my parents and I’ll send for her soon.”
“Something will come up. I will find another job” said John.
“You can’t promise that John – I can’t go back to how things were, I just can’t”
“Being poor isn’t something to be ashamed of. It doesn’t mean we have to compromise ourselves by acting like…”
“Oh not this again! – I’ve told you before, I’m not interested in your armchair philosophy about bloody ‘inner nobility’ not when we’re not going to be able to eat!” She was shaking and the tears were falling freely now but she continued her packing undeterred.
John moved closer and placed a hand on each of her hips. He placed his face next to hers so that he could feel the wetness of her tears against his cheek. “But you are my wife” he said quietly.
She sighed deeply and paused for a moment. “It’s an old contract John, an old contract. We made it when we were both young and poor and at that time, content to be so. You were a different man then, you were full of fight and ambition and I believed you when you said you’d get us out of here. I believed you. I’m sorry.”
“It can still happen – and is our life so bad anyhow? We have each other, we have the little one – she’s so happy.”
“She’s a child John, she doesn’t know any different.” She shook herself free of his grasp. “I can’t spend the rest of my life in this tiny house, on this dirty little street – or worse; we might not even have this place soon.”
“You fear the world too much” said John in a resigned tone. He said nothing more but watched as she finished packing. He then stood at the top of the stairs and watched her descend to leave the house. Sam was waiting for her at the bottom. The child was completely mute with wide eyed confusion.
“I’ll send for you soon sweetheart ok?” said Sam’s mother as she pressed her wet face against hers with a kiss. And with that she turned and left. John picked up the child and they watched from the pavement in front of the house as she disappeared down the snow-covered street.
As David watched what was happening, great furrows gathered all about his brow.
“You judge her?” asked the spirit.
David glanced at the spirit awkwardly with, a look of reluctant acknowledgement.
“A wise heart might reserve judgement about responses to events of which it has have absolutely no experience” said the spirit.
“Yes, b
ut there are basic standards of behaviour” David protested.
“Judgement is a closed door” continued the spirit. “Poverty is a demon that whispers in the ears of many. His words have a dark power that can transform a person’s behaviour into a myriad of dreadful forms.”
As the spirit spoke, the ground under their feet began to shake violently. Cracks appeared in the floor around them and David found himself being thrust into the air on a platform of mobile wood and concrete that had just now been the entrance hall of the house. Looking below he could see John and Sam becoming smaller and smaller as he got higher and higher. Suddenly all became dark and quite still. Even the light from the spirit for a moment was absent.
--
The click of a pressed light switch restored illumination to the scene. David found himself once again stood in a kitchen. The room was windowless and much smaller than even the kitchen of the previous house. The plain yellow walls and off-white cupboards had been hung all about with home-made paper chains, in red and green; indicating that Christmastime was loitering somewhere nearby.
The person who turned on the light was a girl of maybe fifteen years. Without windows it was almost impossible to ascertain the exact time of day but the girl was dressed in a customary school uniform of grey cardigan and skirt with a white shirt and red tie. Her hair was tied back in two pigtails. She dropped her bag to the side of a small round table at one side of the kitchen and turned the dial on a radio that was sat on the table top. The gruff tones of Shane MacGowan filled the small room.
“It was Christmas eve babe, In the drunk tank…”
The girl smiled and began to dance gently as she drifted over to the kitchen cupboards. She took down several tins and a small pan and began to make a meal.
Once she had finished, she covered two plates of food and then sat down at the little table. She took a science textbook and an exercise book out of her bag and started her homework whilst still humming along to the radio.
Quite soon, the sound of the front door opening was followed by the arrival of the girl’s father in the kitchen.
“Hi dad” said the girl, standing on her tiptoes to fling both arms around his neck and planting a tender kiss on his cheek.
“Hello sweetheart” said John hugging his daughter. He appeared to have aged far more than would have been expected in the ten years that had elapsed since that fateful Christmas. The girth that had previously furnished his broad shoulders had migrated to his mid-section and his full head of black hair had thinned to a greying crescent that now clung desperately to his ears. His complexion had grown fallow and his forehead was etched with many lines stacked one atop the other. He wore dark blue overalls stained with grease. On the left side chest pocket of the overalls was a lightning bolt under which was embroidered the words ‘Southern Steel’.
John sat down heavily in one of the two chairs at the kitchen table. He winced as he did so and placed a hand on his tummy rubbing himself just below the sternum.
“Are you Ok dad?”
“Yes I’m fine” John replied. “The hernia has been giving me heartburn again today, that’s all. Nothing that a good meal won’t fix.”
“Oh dad – I wish you didn’t have to go to that place; they work you too hard. I wish there was something that I could do to help.” She placed a plate of food and a cup of water on the table in front of her father before kneeling in front of him and unlacing both his heavy brown boots and slipping them off gently.
“Thank you sweetheart” said John. “Listen, its good work and I’m luckier than most! You just keep doing what you’re doing ok? You’re doing a grand job.” He gestured with a glance towards the textbook pushed to the side of the table.
“I know dad, but there’s some from my class that have gone off to work now. I was thinking that with two wages coming in, you could cut down your….”
“No” said John emphatically. “You just carry on with your work ok? Now no more talk of child labour. You’re going to go to University and you’re going to have a great life and that’s that.”
After dinner John took a wash and then joined Sam in the front room. She was sat on a small brown couch watching a grainy TV set. Under the window at the end of the room was the same plastic Christmas tree from ten years earlier but now it twinkled with a string of multi-coloured lights snaking around its small body. John, as was his custom, sat in a weathered but comfortable armchair at the opposite end of the room, facing away from the TV. Next to his chair was an old bookshelf stacked with numerous copies of well-worn books on topics ranging from philosophy to ornithology and even a small book of old Persian poems. John took down a copy of ‘The Discourses’ of the philosopher Epictetus. He opened the book at a pressed flower book mark that had been given to him by Sam and laid it on the arm of the chair. He then took down a battered leather-backed journal and fountain pen. He laid the notebook open on his lap and began to copy a passage from the discourses that he had highlighted in pencil and had already read twice on the two preceding nights.
Don’t let outward appearances mislead you into thinking that someone with more prestige, power or some other distinction must, on account of these things, be happy. If the essence of the good lies within us, then there is no place for jealousy or envy, and you will not care about being a general, a senator or a consul – you will only care about being free. And the way to be free is to pay little heed to the external circumstances of your life. For it is not external circumstances or events that trouble people but rather their judgements concerning them.
John placed the pen down in the small valley at the centre of his journal. He closed his eyes and let his head relax back in to the headrest of his chair. His lips moved as he mouthed the words from the copied passage in an act of memory. As David watched the scene, his scrunched brow, downturned mouth and jutting lower lip betrayed his confusion of mixed feelings. There was first of all a sense of shame at witnessing such diligence of effort towards resilience and self-betterment such as David himself had never felt compelled to undertake. Secondly there was genuine disbelief that the same diligence had not manifested itself as worldly success.
The spirit motioned to David and they left the room leaving John and Sam sitting in peace. The spirit led David through what he now saw was a very small flat, situated up high in a multi-storied rise of similar abodes. As they walked towards the front door, there was another great flood of light and they stepped out into a crisp, clear winter’s morning. They stood on a balcony walkway overlooking similar walkways to the front and sides forming a square that surrounded a large concrete yard many floors below. The winter’s sun glistened off the dusting of frost that had formed on the red railing that topped the concrete balcony and the sky was a cold, bright blue. Samantha stepped out of the flat, once again dressed in her school uniform, but with the addition of a heavy grey coat and a pink hat, glove and scarf set. She locked the door from the outside, her father having already departed several hours earlier. David and the ghost followed her as she strode along the walkway, down the many flights of stairs and out into the concrete courtyard. She had walked halfway across the courtyard when a voice heralded her from behind.
“Sam, wait up!” A man of around twenty one years, in the prime of life jogged over the concrete towards her. He wore a dark military style duffle coat and black leather gloves. The dark hair on top of his head was covered with a stretchy black winter hat. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of an older man; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in his eye, which betrayed the dark passions that had taken root in his heart.
The man stopped in front of Sam and rubbed his hands together in front of his chest. “Cold isn’t it?” he said, his breath condensing in the cold air as he spoke. “You ok?”
“Yes thanks” said Sam. She shuffled a little and adjusted the one rucksack strap that was slung over her right shoulder. She didn’t look him in the eye.
“So
when we going out then?” asked the man.
“I can’t” she said flustered “I told you my dad wouldn’t….”
“I know, I know” interrupted the man, “I’m just teasing, I’m not really asking again. Listen, I was thinking – how’d you like to make a little bit of Christmas money eh? Help your old man out a bit?”
Sam glanced up at him briefly. “No thanks” she said.
“Look” continued the man. “You know I like you, but I know you’re not into it and that’s cool. But it don’t stop me doing you a little favour now does it eh? Come on - no strings attached. I just thought you might like a bit of cash that’s all.” He gently placed a gloved finger under Sam’s chin and tilted her head up slightly so that she was looking at his face.
Sam blushed and held his gaze for just a moment before looking away and shaking her head. “No. No thanks, I’ve got to go, I’m late for school and it’s our last day.” She dodged past the man and walked the rest of the way across the square.
A Christmas Cameron Page 7
