"Yes, I think so, darling," Annet said. She pressed against him and nuzzled his neck, then pulled him down with her onto the rug. "But what about me?"
* * *
"It was a lousy Christmas for Timmy," Annet said, after they'd readjusted their clothes and were sipping eggnog on the couch. "All I could wrap for him was a scarf and some shirts and things -- the kind of things kids know they'll get anyway -- and one or two cheap toys. I was really afraid he'd lost his belief in Santa that year. Still, kids bounce back. This year he wrote his letter to Santa Claus as usual. You know, you've seen it. And then, tonight, just before bedtime, he shooed me out of the kitchen the same way he's always done to make Santa's sandwich."
"Santa's sandwich?" Charles asked.
"Yeah," she said. She started to snuggle closer to Charles, then glanced at her watch and stood up instead.
"Oh, my gosh," she said. "It's almost time for you to leave, and I'll need you to help me. Anyway, you know how, when you were a kid, you maybe left out milk and cookies for Santa? So he could have a snack on his rounds? And then, Christmas morning, you'd always check to make sure some of the milk had been drunk and the cookies eaten?"
"Yeah," Charles said. He put his red Santa Claus cap back on. "Of course, later on, we realized it was always Dad who. . . ."
"Shhh," Annet said. "Timmy doesn't know yet that you're going to be his new daddy. I thought tomorrow night, when you come over to have dinner with us, we'd make the announcement. . . ."
"I love you, Annet," Charles said in her ear, then held her and kissed her. "But you're right. It is late. What are you going to want me to do?"
"Well, we do a sort of variant here. It started because neither Robert or I cared for milk -- you know how it is when you get older. So I'll get you a glass from the kitchen and I'll want you to pour the unspiked eggnog in it, then take a big drink, so it makes a stain on the glass like milk does, then put it on the mantelpiece."
"Okay," Charles said. He waited until she came back from the kitchen, a milk glass in one hand and a sloppily put together sandwich on a paper plate in the other. He took the glass and filled it with eggnog straight from the carton, then went to the fireplace and took a big drink.
"How am I doing?" he asked with a wink, as he set the half empty glass down on the mantel.
"Wonderful, darling," Annet said. "But now comes the tough part." She handed him the plate with the sandwich. "You see, after we'd convinced Timmy that Santa would probably prefer to have eggnog instead of just milk, he got his own idea. He figured, instead of store bought cookies, Santa would rather have something he'd made for him all by himself. So" -- Annet giggled -- "that's why I'll need you to take a big bite of this perfectly awful peanut butter and jelly sandwich."
Charles gave the sandwich a dubious look. "You know something, Annet. Maybe I could just tear off a corner. . . ."
Annet laughed. "It has to be a real bite. He'll check it. That's why the eggnog had to be unspiked -- he'll put his nose in the glass to check it too in the morning."
Charles looked down at the plate again, at the lumpy bread-covered form in its center. "Peanut butter and jelly, eh?"
"It's his favorite sandwich. The way he sees it, it's nothing but the best for Santa." She kissed him quickly. "Do it for me?"
"Well," he said. "If you put it that way." He set the plate down on the mantel, next to the glass, and picked up the sandwich. He took a big bite and chewed it and swallowed.
"My God. It's gritty!"
"He must have used crunch style peanut butter," Annet said. "And lord knows what else he had on his hands -- he's only a kid."
She took the rest of the sandwich from Charles and put it on the plate on the mantel, then kissed him hard. "But it means so much to him. . . ."
* * *
. . . and Timmy's eyes finally closed of their own accord as he drifted off to sleep, his hand still clutching the box of rat poison from the kitchen that he'd used to make Santa's snack extra special. He dreamed, not of sugarplums and reindeer, but of the crummy trick Santa had played the last Christmas. The clothes and the cheap toys. How, for a whole year, he'd planned to get even.
He slept very soundly, not even hearing the screams that began to echo downstairs, and he dreamed about Mommy's new boyfriend, Charles, and how much nicer he was than Santa.
Diana Wynne Jones
SAMANTHA’S DIARY
Recorded on BSQ SpeekEasi Series 2/89887BQ and discovered in a skip in London’s Regent Street
December 25, 2233
TIRED TODAY AND HAVING a lazy time. Got back late from Paris last night from Mother’s party. My sister is pregnant and couldn’t go (besides, she lives in Sweden) and Mother insisted that one of her daughters was there to meet our latest stepfather. Not that I did meet him particularly. Mother kept introducing me to a load of men and telling me how rich each of them was: I think she’s trying to start me on her own career, which is, basically, marrying for money. Thanks, Mother, but I earn quite enough on the catwalk to be happy as I am. Besides, I’m having a rest from men since I split up with Liam. The gems of Mother’s collection were a French philosopher, who followed me around saying “La vide cc n’est pas le nknt,” (clever French nonsense meaning “The void is not nothing,” I think), a cross-eyed Colombian film director who kept trying to drape himself over me, and a weird millionaire from goodness knows where with diamante teeth. But there were others. I was wearing my new Stiltskins, which caused me to tower over them. A mistake. They always knew where I was. In the end I got tired of being stalked and left. I just caught the midnight bullet train to London, which did not live up to its name. It was late and crowded out and I had to stand all the way.
My feet are killing me today.
Anyway I have instructed Housebot that I am Not At Home to anyone or anything and hope for a peaceful day. Funny to think that Christmas Day used to be a time when everyone got together and gave each other presents. Shudder. Today we think of it as the most peaceful day of the year. I sit in peace in my all-white living room—a by-product of Mother’s career, come to think of it, since my lovely flat was given to me by my last-stepfather-but-one—no, last-but-two now, I forgot.
Oh damn! Someone rang the doorbell and Housebot answered it. I know I told it not to.
Did I say we don’t give Christmas presents now? Talk about famous last words. Housebot trundled back in here with a tree of all things balanced on its flat top. Impossible to tell what kind of tree, as it has no leaves, no label to say who sent it, nothing but a small wicker cage tied to a branch with a fairly large brown bird in it. The damn bird pecked me when I let it out. It was not happy. It has gone to earth under the small sofa and left droppings on the carpet as it ran.
I thought Christmas trees were supposed to be green. I made Housebot put the thing outside on the patio, beside the pool, where it sits looking bare. The bird is hungry. It has been trying to eat the carpet. I went on the Net to see what kind of bird it is. After an hour of trying, I got a visual that suggests the creature is a partridge. A game bird apparently. Am I supposed to eat it? I know they used to eat birds at Christmas in the old days. Yuk. I got on the Net again for partridge food. “Sorry, dear customer, but there will be no deliveries until the start of the Sales on December 27, when our full range of luxury avian foods will again be available at bargain prices.” Yes, but what do I do now?
Oh hooray. Housebot has solved the problem by producing a bowl of tinned sweet corn. I shoved it under the sofa and the creature stopped its noise.
Do trees need feeding?
December 26, 2233
I DO NOT BELIEVE this! Another tree has arrived with another partridge in a cage tied to it. This time I went haring to the front door to make them take it away again, or at least make whoever was delivering it tell me where the things were coming from. But all the man did was shove a birdcage into my hands with two pretty white pigeons in it and go away. The van he drove off in was unlabelled. I raged at Housebot for openi
ng the door, but that does no good. Housebot only has sixty sentences in its repertoire and just kept saying, “Madam, you have a delivery,” until I turned its voice off.
We have had a partridge fight under the sofa.
I took the pigeon cage outside onto the patio and opened it. But will those birds fly away! I seem to be stuck with them too. At least they will eat porridge oats. The partridges won’t. We have run out of tinned sweet corn.
I give up. I’m going to spend the rest of the day watching old movies.
Liam called. I asked him if he had had the nerve to send me four birds and two trees. He said, “What are you talking about? I only rang to see if you’d still got my wristwatch.” I hung up on him. Oaf.
December 27, 2233
THE SALES START TODAY! I was late getting off to them because of the beastly bird food. When I brought up Avian Foodstuffs, I found to my disgust that the smallest amount they deliver is in twenty-kilo bags. Where would I put all that birdseed? I turned the computer off and went out to the corner shop. It was still closed. I had to walk all the way to Carnaby Street before I found anything open and then all the way back carrying ten tins of sweet corn. I had promised to meet Carla and Sabrina in Harrods for coffee and I was so late that I missed them.
Not a good day. And I couldn’t find a single thing I wanted in the Sales.
I came home—my Stiltskins were killing me—to find, dumped in the middle of my living room, yet another tree with a partridge tied to it, a second cage of two white pigeons and a large coop with three different birds in it. It took me a while to place these last, until I remembered a picture book my second stepfather had given me when I was small. Under H for Hen there was a bird something like these, except that one was round and brown and gentle looking. Not these. Hens they may be, but they have mean witchy faces, ugly speckled feathers and a floppy red bit on top that makes them look like some kind of alien. When I got home, they were engaged in trying to peck one another naked. The room was full of ugly little feathers. I shrieked at Housebot and then made it take the lot out onto the patio, where I made haste to let the beastly hens out. They ran around cackling and pecking the partridges, the potted plants and the three trees. They were obviously hungry. I sighed and got on to Avian Foodstuffs again. Problems there. Food for which kind of bird? they queried. Hens, I tapped in. Pigeons. Partridges. They have just delivered three twenty-kilo sacks. They are labelled differently, but they look suspiciusly the same inside to me. I know because I opened all three and scattered a heap from each around the patio—and another heap indoors because I have had to rescue the partridges. They all eat all kinds.
Exhausted after this. I phoned Carla and Sabrina. Sabrina was useless. She had just found some Stiltskins half price in pink and couldn’t think of anything else except should she buy them. “Toss a coin,” I told her. Carla was at least sympathetic. “Help!” I told her. “I’m being stalked by a flutter that keeps sending me birds.”
“Are you sure it isn’t one of Liam’s practical jokes?” Carla asked. Shrewd point. He probably rang with that nonsense about his watch just to make sure I was home. “And haven’t you told your Housebot thingy not to let any of this livestock in?” Carla said.
“I have, I have!” I cried out. “But the darn thing takes not the blindest bit of notice!”
“Reprogramme it,” Carla advised. “It must have slipped a cog or something.”
Or Liam reprogrammed it, I thought. So I spent an hour with the manual, pushing buttons, by which time I was so livid that I rang Liam. Got his answering service. Typical! I left an abusive message—which he probably won’t hear because of Housebot trying to clean up feathers and making the howling noise it does when it chokes—but it relieved my feelings anyway.
December 28, 2233
I SPENT A GLORIOUS morning at the Sales and came back with six bags of Wonderful Bargains, to find I have four parrots now. Plus one more partridge (and tree), two more pigeons and three more of those unspeakable hens. Housebot has ignored my attempt at programming as if I’d never tried. The patio is now a small forest full of droppings. The pigeons sit on the trees and the hens rush about below. Indoors are four scuttling partridges and four of those large rings on sticks where parrots are supposed to perch, not that they do. The red one has taken a liking to my bedroom. The green one flies about all the time, shouting swearwords, and the multicoloured two perch anywhere so long as it isn’t their official perches. I have put those in the closet because Housebot stops whenever it runs into one. I have ordered a twenty-kilo sack of Avian Feed (parrots), which is actually different from the others and which the parrots mostly consume from saucers on the kitchen table. I walk about giving a mad laugh from time to time. I am inured. I am resigned.
No I am NOT!
Someone has taught those damn parrots to shout, “Samantha! I love you!” They do it all the time now.
I put on my most austerely beautiful clothes and my Stiltskins and stormed round to Liam’s flat. He looked terrible. He was in his nightclothes. He hadn’t shaved or combed his curls and I think he was drunk. His flat was just as terrible. I saw it because as soon as he opened the door I marched in with Liam backing in front of me, shouting at the top of my voice. I admit that the nightclothes made me angrier still because it was obvious to me he had a woman in there. But he hadn’t actually. He was just lying about. He said, “Just shut up and tell me what you’re yelling about.” So I did. And he laughed. This made me furious. I yelled, “You are stalking me with birds!” and to my great surprise I burst into tears.
To my further surprise, Liam was almost nice about it. He said, “Now look, Sammy, have you any idea how much parrots cost?” I hadn’t. He told me. It was a lot. “And before you get suspicious that I know,” he said, “I only know because I did an article on them last month. Right? Since when did I have enough money for four parrots? And I don’t even know where you buy hens, let alone partridges. So it’s somebody else doing this to you, not me. He has to be a rich practical joker, and he has to know how to get at your Housebot to make it ignore your orders and let these birds in. So think about all the rich men you know and then go and yell at the likely ones. Not me.”
I gave in. “So I’ve walked all this way for nothing,” I said. “And my feet hurt.”
“That’s because you wear such silly shoes,” he said.
“I’ll have you know,” I said, “that these are the very latest Stiltskins. They cost me thousands.”
He laughed, to my further indignation, and told me, “Then go home in a taxi.”
While I was waiting for the taxi, Liam put his arm round me—in an absentminded way, as if he had forgotten we weren’t still together—and said, “Poor Sammy. I’ve had a thought. What kind of trees are they?”
“How should I know?” I said. “They haven’t any leaves.”
“That is a problem,” Liam said. “Can you do me a favour and let me know if what your stalker sends next is something quite valuable?”
“I might,” I said, and then the taxi came. I don’t like these latest taxis. A mechanical tab comes out of the meter that says TIP and it’s always huge. But it was probably worth it to know that Liam hasn’t been doing this to me.
December 29, 2233
WHATEVER IDEA LIAM HAD, he was quite right! The usual tree and avians started arriving, one more partridge, more hens, more pigeons and four more parrots, noisy ones. I left Housebot, who had traitorously let them in, to deal with the damn creatures—although I have to feed the things because I can’t get Housebot to get it through its circuitry that living things have to eat: Housebot simply goes round clearing up the piles of birdseed unless I order it to stop. Anyway, I left it shunting coops and the latest tree onto the patio and set off for the Sales. I was halfway down the steps outside when a courier arrived and made me sign for a smallish package.
Someone’s sent me a book now! I thought disgustedly as I went back indoors. I nearly didn’t open it, but, because of what Liam
had said, I thought I might as well. What are valuable books? I thought as I tore off wrapping. Antique Bibles? First editions of Winnie the Pooh? But it wasn’t a book. A book-size jewel case fell on the floor. I picked that up quickly before Housebot could clear it away. I gasped a bit when I opened it. There were five rings in it, all of them very flashy and valuable looking. One bulged with diamonds—or what looked like diamonds—and the rest looked like sapphires, emeralds and equally valuable stones, all in gold settings. And there was a note on top, not in real handwriting, if you see what I mean, but in that kind of round, careful writing that shop assistants use when you ask them to include a message. It said: “From your ardent admirer. Marry me.”
“Blowed if I will!” I said aloud.
The rings are all too small. I think that proves it wasn’t Liam. He once bought me an engagement ring, after all, and he knows that my fingers are rather wide at the base. Unless he’s being very cunning, of course. Whoever sent the rings seems to have very flashy taste. They all reminded me so much of the kind of glass-and-plastic rings that people give you when you are a little girl that I took the whole case of them with me when I went out to the Sales and had them checked out by a jeweller. And they are real. I could buy five more pairs of Stiltskins if I sold them. Well!
I meant to tell Liam, but I met Carla in Oxford Street and I forgot. When I told her, she wanted to know if I was thinking of marrying the unknown stalker. “No way!” I told her. “My mother probably would, though.”
Gift-Wrapped & Toe-Tagged: A Melee of Misc. Holiday Anthology Page 92
