Lord of the Nutcracker Men

by Iain Lawrence

  The trunk was only two feet long. It fitted into a little wooden tub painted the dull red of old bricks.

  “The bristles are made of goose feathers,” said Auntie. “You'll see how it goes.”

  We wedged the trunk into the tub, then stuck the branches on. They fanned out like spokes, in four layers growing smaller toward the top. The needles didn't look like feathers, or much like needles either. There were funny bunches of red berries at the tip of each branch, and the whole tree looked spindly and short.

  “Your grandfather would set it on a stool,” said Auntie Ivy. “I suppose your dad's forgotten that, and remembers a tree that towered above him.”

  “But wouldn't he know from later?” I asked.

  “We only used it for two Christmases,” said Auntie Ivy. “Then your grandfather went off to that awful war in Siam, and he never came home from that.”

  I picked the glass ornaments from the box. Auntie Ivy sorted through the candleholders.

  “Does Mr. Tuttle have a tree?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “He'll be leaving soon, I think.”

  “Leaving?” Her face fell. “Why on earth is he leaving?”

  It amazed me that there was some local news she didn't know. I said, “His roses got damaged.”

  “And he's leaving for that?”

  “Because no one owned up,” I said.

  She looked terribly sad, as though her world had ended. “I know they mean everything to him,” she said. “His wife's roses; she started them. He kept them going as though they were children she left him. But he can't go away.”

  “He's already packing,” I said. “You know all those things in his house?”

  “No,” said Auntie. “I haven't been to his house since his wife died.”

  “But he lives just down the road.”

  “And keeps himself to himself,” said Auntie. “Remember that day he came here, because you weren't in school? That was the first time in seven years. He's lived like a hermit, nearly. But you were changing him; you were bringing him out of his shell.”

  The tree shook as I put the last ornaments on. Auntie Ivy held on to the tub. She said, “I think you should invite him for Christmas dinner.”

  “All right.” We started fitting the candles in their little tin cups. “He can celebrate the end of the war.”

  “Oh, that could be years away, Johnny,” she said. “No, Auntie.” I clipped the candles on the tree. “The war's going to end on Christmas.”

  “They used to say that, Johnny,” she said, staring at me through the wiry branches. “But not anymore. It might go on—”

  “Yes it is,” I told her. “It's going to stop on Christmas Day.”

  “And how do you know that?” she said.

  “I just know.”

  “This isn't to do with your soldiers, is it?” She frowned when I nodded. “For heaven's sake, we've been over that. Wooden soldiers can't decide the war.”

  “I don't know,” I said. “I think they might at Christmas.”

  She sighed. “Do you know what this is sounding like?”

  “It's not rubbish,” I said.

  “It's mindless chatter,” she told me. “I can't abide mindless chatter.”

  At the bottom of the box I found a little Father Christmas with his flowing beard and long red dressing gown. There was a spot for him on the very tip of the trunk, and I stood him there as the tree swayed and shook.

  “Well, it's not so bad,” said Auntie Ivy. She touched the branches the way Mr. Tuttle had touched his roses. “It's a brave little tree, I suppose.”

  “It is going to look splendid,” I said.

  “Oh, Johnny,” she said. “Won't you please go and ask Mr. Tuttle?”

  “I think I'll take him a present,” I said.

  She beamed. “That's very kind of you.”

  I let her think what she wanted, but it really wasn't kindness. If I gave a present to someone, I thought, he would have to give one back to me.

  I took the money that was left over from Guy Fawkes Day and bought a box of Bovril for my father, and a little rosebush for Mr. Tuttle. It was just a withered stump with a single twig, but the shopkeeper told me it would grow into a very fine rose.

  Mr. Tuttle nearly cried when he saw it. He held it like a baby, in both his hands. He said, “I don't think I've ever been given something that means so much to me.”

  “Is it as good as your old ones?” I asked.

  He looked at the stump, at the tiny arm branching from it, and I could see that he was trying to find something to say that wouldn't disappoint me. He was too honest to lie, but too kind to say no. Finally he smiled and told me, “I shall treasure it even more.”

  “You won't have to move away now, will you?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don't know,” he sighed. “We'll see.” “I'm sorry it's not a bit bigger,” I said.

  “It will grow, Johnny. Don't worry about that,” said Mr. Tuttle. “In a few years it will be as big as Glory. The flowers will be just as pretty as hers.”

  I thought he was joking, but he wasn't. “You give your roses names?” I asked.

  “The new ones, yes,” he said. “You see, Johnny, Glory wasn't just any rose.” He cradled my little stump and added, in a hurry, “Not that this one is. But Glory was a hybrid, a brand-new thing.”

  He took me into his house. There were more tea chests in his front room, a stack of them against the wall he'd bared. His black gown, neatly folded, lay on top of the pile. We went through to the kitchen and sat at a table where all his silverware had been arranged in tidy patterns.

  “A rose grower does the work of God,” said Mr. Tuttle. “I was creating something, Johnny. In the spring Glory was going to bloom for the first time, and the world would have something new and beautiful. In the midst of a war, the world would be a little better for what I was doing in my garden.”

  He made me feel dreadful, all rotten inside. I wondered what he would say if I told him that I was the one who had killed his Glory rose.

  He was touching the stump I'd given him, peeling bits of bark from its frail little branch, already starting it going. “Whoever harmed Glory harmed the whole world,” he said. “But myself most of all. My wife bred the parents and I was breeding the child. My wife lived on in those roses.”

  I was trying to decide how to tell him the truth when his mood turned suddenly to anger. “And he never came forward! That cowardly boy,” he said. “If he came to me now I would thrash him for what he has done.”

  My shame and my fear must have shown on my face. Mr. Tuttle softened his voice, and even smiled. “I'm sorry,” he said. “Here you are, the only one who has stood by me, the bearer of this wonderful gift, and I'm venting all my anger on you, the one who least deserves it.”

  I hung my head.

  “You restore my faith in boys,” he told me. “You've been so kind, you and your aunt.”

  “I wish you wouldn't leave,” I said.

  “Bless you, Johnny. Perhaps I shouldn't.”

  “We hoped you would come for Christmas dinner,” I said. “Auntie sent me to ask you.”

  That seemed to please him greatly. “I would love to come,” he said.

  CHAPTER 17

  December 21, 1914

  Dearest Johnny,

  Your box of Bovril arrived today, and let me tell you that it caused quite a stir among my mates. I brewed up a cup straight away, and I wish you could have seen their faces. Green with envy? Why, that doesn't begin to describe it.

  We had a lantern show last night and a billiards match this morning. It's such a pleasant change from the way the war used to be that I'm almost ashamed to tell you about it. In fact I can't think of much more to add, so this will be a rather short letter.

  Thank you so much for your gift. I hope you're not angry that I didn't wait until Christmas to open it.

  I've not had time to make you a soldier, what with the football and cricket and everything. Please forgive me, Johnn
y. I love you so much.

  Have to go now.

  All my love,

  Dad

  Dad sent the letter in the same sort of green envelope that had arrived just before the victory. Auntie Ivy put it away in her wooden box, and I trudged back to Cliffe, to buy presents for Auntie and Mum.

  It was a cold morning, the gray clouds bulging with rain or maybe snow. I wore my overcoat, and went north up the road to the village. The few coins I had jingled in my pocket.

  It was easy to shop for Auntie. I bought her a pair of knitting needles, thinking her old ones would soon be worn away by all their clicking and scraping. But I couldn't decide what to get for my mum.

  I went all through the shops, then around them again. I went from one to the other, looking at ribbons and hat pins and writing paper. I looked at candles and tapers and tiny horses meant to dangle from bracelets. But the things that I liked were too dear, and I went back to the first shop and started again.

  The geezer who'd sold me fireworks asked what I was looking for.

  “Something for my mum,” I said.

  “Ah. Perhaps she'd like one of these.”

  He put them out on the counter, fancy little boxes full of fancy little chocolates. There were some like tiny eggs and some like seashells. They all looked very expensive. Right away I knew that my mum would love them. “How much do they cost?” I asked.

  “Oh, they vary,” said the geezer. “How much do you have?”

  I took out all my coins: three pennies, a ha'penny and a farthing. I turned my pockets inside out, but there wasn't more than that.

  “It's all I have,” I said. “My dad's at the front and my mum's in Woolwich, and my auntie's a skinflint, sir.”

  His fingers came down on my pennies. He nudged them toward me, then hooked them around and slid them into his palm. “I'll go to the poorhouse,” he said. “But you're close enough. There's even a farthing left over to buy yourself a sweetie.”

  I pushed the chocolates into my pocket and started for home. It was already late afternoon, but if I hurried down the footpaths I could still get there before the twilight brought old Storey Sims out with his lantern and his hook.

  The light had no shadows, and the forest seemed thick and gloomy. I ran down the path, hurdling roots and frozen puddles, my elbows brushing on crackly bushes. I pretended that my knitting needles were swords, and I slashed them at the twigs. I was a hussar, charging, and the sound of my feet echoed from the trees like the hooves of horses. I kept running, past the orchard, past the crumbled cottage.

  And a voice cried out: a howl.

  It was an eerie sound that made me stop and stand absolutely still. I wasn't sure just where the voice had come from.

  I heard it again, and turned toward it. The ruined heap of a stone wall loomed above the bushes. The sound had come from there.

  It was the orange cat, I thought. I laughed and shook myself, and said, “It's just the cat.”

  But then it called my name.

  “Johnny,” it said. “Help me, Johnny.”

  I didn't move.

  “Help me,” said the voice.

  I saw the sergeant then, his head, his battered cap. I saw him in the gloom among the fallen stones, and his hand came up and beckoned. And he moaned. He moaned such a heartbroken sound that I couldn't pass him by.

  I walked toward him, through the dead grass and the leaves the wind had scattered. I reached the stones and put my hands on them—they were cold as ice—and peered down at the sergeant where he lay on his back, on the ground, all twisted in the rubble. His face was white and it glimmered with sweat. His fingers were like white worms writhing on his throat.

  “I'm cold,” he said. “So cold.”

  “Then why are you lying here?” I asked.

  He closed his eyes and winced and jerked upright with another horrible moan. Clutching at his bandaged leg, his head thrashing from side to side, he panted like a dog before falling back again. Though I shook from the cold, he was sweating. A trickle of sweat dribbled from under his cap, down his forehead. He mopped it away, smearing it across the bruises that had spread to both cheeks.

  “I'm dying,” he said. “Oh, Johnny, help me.”

  “How?” I asked. “Stay with me for a while.”

  I sat on the stones of the fallen cottage, wishing that Mr. Tuttle was with me, or even Auntie Ivy. I didn't know what to do to help the sergeant, and I didn't want to stay.

  “I saw him again,” he said. “The angel.” His hand shot out and grasped at his leg. The pain took all the breath from him, and for a minute he couldn't speak at all. Then again he said, “I'm so cold.”

  I took off my coat and covered him with it, or only his chest; my coat was so small. As I bent over him I smelled the rot in his flesh, and what I thought was the mud of the trenches still caked on his boots and his clothes.

  The sergeant opened his eyes. They were huge, all yellow and dull. “There he is,” he said. “Do you see him, Johnny? Do you see how he glows?”

  I looked behind me. There was nothing there but a pale smudge of sunlight, an orange smear on the clouds.

  “He's coming now,” said the sergeant.

  He made me so scared that I couldn't bear to sit there anymore. “I'll bring some help,” I said. But when I tried to leave, his hand clenched on my boot.

  “No,” he said. “Just stay with me. Talk to me.”

  “About what?” “Anything. The war; your father. Tell me about James.”

  “It's not so bad anymore,” I said. “My dad's playing billiards in the dugout. He went to a picture show.”

  I heard a bubbling in his chest, a wheeze that came out from his throat. It took me a moment to realize that the sergeant was laughing.

  “Is that what he told you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Poor James. What a good soul. He wouldn't want you to worry.”

  “It's true,” I said.

  “No, Johnny, it's not. There's no billiards, no picture shows. It's mud and more mud, death and more death.” The sergeant groaned. “It will never change and it will never stop. The guns, the shells, the rats and the mud.”

  “It's not like that anymore,” I said.

  “It will always be that way. It will never stop,” he said. “The battles go on and on. The dead pile up in no-man's-land. The shells bury them and unearth them again.”

  “Stop it!” I said. “My dad never lies.”

  “Believe what you like.” He trembled with a sudden pain. “It's a horror, is what it is. I saw the trench collapse, and a dead man's hand appear, reaching from the mud. I saw a soldier hang his canteen on the hooks of those fingers. And I should be there, Johnny. It's where I belong.”

  “You were wounded,” I said. “You're a hero.”

  He shook his head, but it only lolled from side to side. “I'm not that.”

  There was a haunted look in his eyes. I was glad when he closed them.

  His face had shrunk to his skull. But it was the same face in the picture at Storey's farm.

  “Murdoch?” I whispered.

  His eyes flickered, but didn't open. “You know,” he said. “Do others know? Does my father know?”

  “He goes looking for you,” I said.

  “Don't tell him you've seen me.” A tremble started in his hand and shook up through his arm.

  “Why won't you go home?” I asked.

  “He wouldn't understand. I did it myself, Johnny.”

  “Did what?”

  “I shot myself.” Sweat beaded up on his face. “I couldn't bear it anymore. The misery; the fear. I'm a coward, not a hero.”

  “But you still need help,” I said.

  Even his breath made him shake. “My dad was a soldier; his dad too. He would hate me for this.”

  “I won't tell him,” I promised. “Only my auntie.”

  “No one can know.” He winked, and it was ghastly to see. “It's our secret, Johnny. Yours and mine.”


  “And Thomas Cade's,” I said.

  “No,” said Murdoch. “He was on the hospital ship, coming home.” He moved his shoulders, fitting down among the stones. “The doctors already knew what I'd done, I think. I saw them whispering, pointing at me. When the ship docked I'd be arrested, then shot for desertion. That night Thomas died. I changed my tag with his; I put some of my things in his pockets.”

  He started to shake more violently. I tightened my coat around his shoulders, but it didn't seem to help him. His leg twisted, and he moaned, but his eyes stayed closed. “Do you have any food?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. But I did. Mum's chocolates were in my coat pocket, inches from his hand. My money was gone; they were all I could buy her.

  Murdoch sighed. His breath rattled. “When I'm gone, cover me over,” he said. “Some dirt, some stones. I don't want the dogs to get me.”

  “Please don't talk like that,” I said. “I can bring you help. They can make you better.”

  “For what?” he asked. “To shoot me? To send me back? I'd rather die here than go back.”

  His arm groped under my coat. His white fingers came out from the edge, curled like the hooks he'd seen in the trenches. “Say you'll do it,” he said. “Just cover me over,” he said. “But make sure that I'm gone.”

  I couldn't do that, and I didn't want him to die. I took out my chocolates and fed them to him. He gobbled them down.

  Right away he was calm, and he lay on the stones with a peaceful look on his face. “I didn't think I would ever eat chocolate again,” he said. “God bless you, Johnny.”

  I held his hand, but I hated him for what he was asking.

  Murdoch lay quietly, his chest hardly lifting. Now and then a tremor came through his hand into mine. Then his eyes opened again. They started as slits, then widened suddenly into huge, horrid balls. “There he is now,” he said. “The angel. He's here.”

  His head eased back, and he fell into an awful sleep that made him twitch and cry. I imagined that he was dreaming himself back to the war, though what he was seeing I couldn't even guess. Then his hand flew up to ward something off, and he howled. And I thought that he wasn't asleep at all, that he wasn't dreaming, and whatever he saw was really there. A man, a beast, an angel—whatever it was—it was oozing with the shadows into the ruins of the cottage. And it made me shake with fright.