A Christmas Cameron

by Benedict Arthur

  “I can’t see a thing” said the Registrar again as he peered into the hole in Sam’s abdomen.

  The colour had drained completely from David’s features. He stood aghast and completely speechless with one hand cupped over his mouth as if to hold in place an imminent vomitus. The sheer horror of the situation, the birth of a baby, the failure of the system, the bravery of the doctor, the knowledge of his own dreadful contribution - each of these things generated separate threads of emotion, and each vied for supremacy all at once leaving his mind entwined in a tangled knot of feeling.

  --

  The Phantom spread it dark robes around him again and for the first time David felt a sense of relief at their embrace. When the robes parted, David found himself stood in a Churchyard in the dead of night. His heart beat at such a rapid pace that he could feel every aspect of its motion in his chest. He lowered his hand from his mouth and turned to the spirit.

  “Spectre,” said David, “something informs me that our parting moment is at hand. I know it, but I know not how.”

  The Spirit raised its spectral hand again and pointed at a nearby grave stone, which was shrouded in the low fog that lay on the ground all about them.

  “Before I draw nearer to the stone to which you point,” said David “answer me one question. Are these the shadows I have seen, of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?”

  Still the Ghost pointed to the stone.

  “Certain actions will lead to certain ends. And if a man perseveres in behaving in certain ways then there are inevitable consequences” said David. “But if he changes course, if he departs from his path then surely the ends will change! Say that it is so with what you are to show me!”

  The Spirit was immovable and silent as ever.

  David walked slowly towards the stone, trembling as he went. As he approached, he saw that a large, deep grave had been dug in front. He crept slower and slower and as the cavity of the grave came into view and his stomach gave a sudden sickening lurch as he saw two corpses laid at the bottom.

  He stood at the very edge of the grave and stared at the horrible spectacle below. The first body was Sam. She wore the same flimsy green jacket that he had seen her in so many times before, and her death mask was the same look of sorrow which David had come to fear so much. The second body was his own – his old self gone mad, that he had seen locked in the room at the back of his house. The face was twisted into a grimace of frustration and pain, betraying the feelings that had been in his heart during his final moments.

  “No, Spirit! Oh no, no!” He turned and clutched its robe, ignoring the terrible cold, “hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been before these visits. Why would you show me this, if I am past all hope!”

  For the first time the spirits hand appeared to shake.

  “Good Spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: “You take pity upon me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by changing my life!”

  David shuffled back so as to try and look at the spirits face. As he did so the ground beneath him crumbled and he fell backwards into the grave, landing with a dull thud between the two bodies. He turned his head to the left and saw Sam’s wide dead eyes staring at him. Unable to bear her gaze he whipped his head to the right only to be met with his own lifeless, crazed stare. He turned his head into the middle to avoid them both and opened his mouth as if to let out a cry but as he did so, he saw the body of the spirit dropping into the grave towards him. The spirit stopped with its black hooded void just a foot away from David’s face.

  The spirit pinned David to the floor and reached out its spectral hand until it touched the clothes that covered his chest. The cold fingers began to tear at the cloth, parting back the layers and eventually revealing his pale, bare skin. And the fingers did not stop there. They continued to fumble, pick and scratch, pulling back skin and fat and muscle and bone until it finally revealed his heart. David did not experience the pain that would have been proportionate to such vivisection but he nevertheless gave an agonised cry as he watched the spirit delve into his chest.

  The spirit reached out a single long finger and touched his beating heart. He moved the finger up and down, even as David resisted and squirmed, and it was as if the ghost was writing something upon his very heart.

  “Please Spirit, hear me! He screamed, I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”

  Wriggling free, David caught hold of the spectral hand. It sought to free itself, but David was determined, and detained it. The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him and pressed him back into the cold, hard ground.

  David laid back, screwed his eyes shut and held his hands up as if in earnest prayer – his final entreaty for the spirit to stop and for him to have his fate reversed. All became silent. He slowly opened his eyes and as he did so, saw an alteration in the Phantom’s hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.

  STAVE FIVE

  The End of It.

  Yes! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time that lay before him was his own, time in which to make amends!

  “I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!” David repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. “The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Margaret! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this! I say it on my knees, Margaret; on my knees!” He was so flustered and so glowing with his good intentions, that his broken voice could scarcely bring forth the words. He had been sobbing violently in his struggle with the Spirit, and his face was wet with tears.

  “They are not torn” cried David patting his clothes. He lifted up his nightshirt to reveal his unharmed chest. “And I am not cut! I am here—intact and I swear that the shadows of the things that would have been are going to be dispelled. They will be. I know they will!” He was suddenly awash with a great feeling of joy.

  “I don’t know what to do!” cried David, laughing and crying in the same breath. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world. Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”

  He waltzed into his own study and stood there breathless.

  “Ah the chairs where we conversed!” cried David, starting off again, and dancing near the fireplace. “There’s the door, by which Margaret entered! There’s the corner where the Ghost of Christmas Present, sat!” He opened the door and waltzed again out into the hall and out to the balcony of the great staircase. “Here’s the place where I saw the faces of the tortured Spirits!” He looked at the portraits of his predecessors – their faces all restored to their former looks of haughty indifference. “It’s all right, it’s all true, it all happened. Ha ha ha!”

  Really, for a man who had been out of practice for some time, it was a splendid laugh, a most memorable laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs!

  “I don’t even know what day of the month it is!” said David. “I don’t know how long I’ve been among the Spirits. I don’t know anything. I’m like a new born baby. Never mind. I don’t care. I’d rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop! Hallo here!”

  He was suddenly distracted from his revelling by the sound of Big Ben ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang, hammer; ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash! “Oh, glorious, glorious!”

  He ran to the window of his office, opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. “Oh, glorious! Glorious!”

  One of the young Downing Street staff had just passed though security and was ab
out to enter the house when David shouted at him from above “What’s to-day!” cried David, calling downward to the young man who was actually no more than just a boy.

  “Eh?” returned the boy, looking up with surprise.

  “What’s to-day, my fine fellow?” said David.

  “To-day!” replied the boy. “Why, it’s Christmas Day.”

  “It’s Christmas Day!” said David to himself. “I haven’t missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!”

  “Hallo!” returned the boy.

  “Do you know of any stores that are open today and at this hour?” David inquired.

  “This is London, sir” replied the lad “there will be very many of them around about.”

  “An intelligent boy!” said David. “A remarkable boy! Right – wait there.” David went to his desk and withdrew roll of money containing many, many rolled fifty pound notes. He returned to the window and threw the roll out to the boy. The boy picked it up out of the snow and looked at it, bemused.

  “Find a shop my lad – I need you to do some shopping for me” David shouted down.

  “Sir, there may be several thousand here” replied the boy.

  “Indeed, spend it all my boy – buy as many mince pies, puddings, crackers and toys as you can with that and bring them back here double quick.”

  “Really?” said the boy looking up suspiciously.

  “Yes, yes” said David, “I am being serious! Do this shopping for me and you shall be greatly in my favour – be back within an hour and I’ll raise your salary!”

  The boy was off like a shot. “I’ll send it to the Archbishop” whispered David, rubbing his hands, and splitting with a laugh. “He’ll have no idea where it’s all come from!”

  --

  Once the boy had left, David shut the window and went over to his desk. He picked up his telephone. “Hello, yes Merry Christmas!” he proclaimed in a hearty voice to the surprised voice at the other end “be a good fellow and connect me to the Police Commissioner.”

  The Commissioner was sat on the floor of his living room surrounded by wrapping paper. His daughters, in spite of being almost grown had woken at 5am to open their gifts and he was sat watching them contentedly when his official phone line began to ring. He heaved a sigh on hearing the noise and muttered through gritted teeth “It’s Christmas morning for gods’ sake”. He walked into the hallway and picked up the phone. Hearing David’s voice did, at first, add to his irritation greatly.

  “Hello Andrew! A very Merry Christmas to you and your kin, I am terribly sorry to trouble you so early” David almost sang the words down the phone.

  “Hello Prime Minister” said Andrew, confused.

  “Now about that girl from yesterday, in honour of the season, I would like to drop all charges against her. I trust you took my comments about corporal punishment as the joke that they were intended to be?”

  Andrew could detect a genuinely more benevolent tone in David’s voice. But during his long career he had seen every kind of intention dressed up as kindness, so he still proceeded with caution. “Well, I carried out your instructions Prime Minister, I sent her to as unpleasant a place as I could find but she behaved very well so there was no reason to use any force against her.”

  “Good! Good!” David cried out with happiness and relief. “What joyous news indeed. Well, you can let her go Commissioner, no need to take this any further and thank you for discharging your duties with such diligence; you are a true servant of the people – a credit to the country – Merry Christmas!”

  The Commissioner hung up the phone. He looked at the handset confusedly for a moment and thought to himself that he was unsure as to whether it was a good or a bad thing that the country was being run by someone whose moods were so erratic. But in spite of this, as he returned to his daughters and the opening of gifts he did definitely notice that the weight of his body felt ever so slightly lighter upon the ground as he sat himself down.

  --

  A loud honk came from outside David’s window – he looked into the street and saw the boy he had despatched outside the security gates, squeezed into a corner of a Black London Cab surrounded by food and toys. Three other cabs, similarly filled with Christmas goodies, whose driver’s wore expressions of great amusement, were waiting in convoy down the street being shooed away by the Downing Street Security. David rushed down the stairs and out into the street.

  Once the business was complete and he had directed the convoy towards the Archbishop’s Christmas Dinner, David walked back to the door of his chambers and grasped the great brass knob of his front door.

  “I shall love it, as long as I live!” cried David, patting it with his hand. “I scarcely ever looked at it before. What an honest expression it has in its face! It’s a wonderful knocker!”

  The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cabs, and the chuckle with which he promised the boy his raise, were only exceeded by the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his chair again, and chuckled till he cried.

  Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to shake very much; and shaving requires attention, even when you don’t dance while you are at it. But if he had cut the end of his nose off, he would have put a piece of sticking-plaster over it, and been quite satisfied.

  David dressed himself ‘all in his best,’ and at last got into his official car and sped towards the private hospital where Samantha was already waiting, eager to return to the family home for Christmas morning. As he saw his wife at the end of a long hospital corridor, a pang was sent across David’s heart as he thought how she might one day have to look upon him; but he knew what path now lay straight before him, and he took it.

  “My darling wife” said David, quickening his pace, and taking her gently in his arms. “How are you? I have missed you terribly. A Very, Merry Christmas!” And before Samantha could speak and express her surprise at his much transformed demeanour, David silenced her with a long kiss, filled with more affection than he had seen fit to afford for many a year.

  As they rode in the car towards their home, David explained his much altered plans for the day. That they would wake the children and open the presents and that instead of having dinner at home they would take up Archbishop Rowan’s invitation. And when Samantha protested, he softened her objections with words about what small children would be in attendance and that their being poor would mean having an otherwise dismal time and how the special dinner would no doubt make their small faces red and happy. And of course being of a soft heart, these descriptions brought a wetness to Samantha’s eyes that dissolved any further protests.

  --

  Once Christmas at home was complete, with the children awoken to their great surprise and the warm Christmas hugs and kisses given and the presents opened and played with, then put in pride of place; David bundled his family into their waiting car and sent them off to the great dinner. He himself got into a separate car and gave the driver strange instruction to go into the heart of the city. In they went, further and further at great speed through the empty streets. And as they went, David kept an eagle eye on the alleys and byways.

  Finally, they turned a corner into a dirty neglected street that was horribly familiar and there David saw a frail girl walking slowly through the snow, one hand in her pocket and the other carrying a bag containing a blanket and a pizza box.

  “Stop the car!” David screamed and leapt from the vehicle and raced towards the girl. “Wait!” he shouted as he raised one hand in the air.

  The girl turned and on seeing this suited man running towards her, closely flanked by two guards dressed in black, she of course began to run away, thinking herself the victim of some gangland attack. After just a few feet, she slipped and fell onto her side allowing David to catch her up. Breathless and panting, he stopped and stood over her. The bright winter sun was directly behi
nd David’s head as Sam looked up at him squinting.

  “Sam isn’t it?” he said. He could barely contain the urge to reach down and embrace her from the relief at seeing her alive and well. Sam cowered on the floor and covered her face.

  “It’s ok” said David stretching out his hand, “I just want to help.”

  --

  David was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more. To Sam, he was a great friend and support. He helped her back onto her feet from that very morning and in doing so transmuted her story from one of sorrow, into one of joy.

  Safe lodgings – a safe solid base - were found for her. The baby – a little girl was born on time, quite fit and well. Eventually Sam went out into the world again and quite of her own free will, finished her studies and found her way to happy employment. And that’s not all. One Christmas, a number of years later, she and a vibrant, red cheeked, chubby young lady were walking through London town when they were spotted by a broad shouldered gentleman, formerly of Her Majesty’s Police Force. He blushed as if his cheeks had been pinched with a wrestlers grip when he saw Sam’s smile again, and he could not help but scoop into his arms the little girl whose heartbeat had aligned itself with his own even before she was born. Were you to see them nowadays, walking as they often do, hand in hand, in hand – I’m sure you would think them to be a very handsome family indeed.