The Last of the Spirits

by Chris Priestley

  ‘Who are they, Pa?’ he said.

  ‘Well, I’m not sure, my boy,’ said Bob Cratchit to his son.

  Lizzie was put down in a chair by the fire and a blanket wrapped round her. A woman knelt next to her, rubbing her hands.

  ‘Keep her warm, my darling,’ said Scrooge’s nephew, as he put Sam down in a chair on the other side of the hearth. ‘Let’s get them some soup, Bob. They need something warm inside them. They are so cold and I don’t think they can have eaten for days. Where’s Uncle?’

  ‘I’m here, my boy,’ said a voice nearby. ‘I’m here, Fred.’

  Sam turned at its sound and there was Scrooge. The sour, pinched old miser of a fortnight ago was now a picture of geniality.

  ‘Upon my word!’ he said. ‘Upon my word! It’s them. Is it really them? It is! It is!’

  ‘You know these children, Uncle?’ said Fred.

  ‘I do,’ said Scrooge. ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘But how?’

  Everyone in the room – the clerk, the nephew, their wives and their children, including the boy on crutches – all looked towards Scrooge for an answer.

  Sam could see by the uncomfortable look on Scrooge’s face that the old man had not shared the events of that night with his guests.

  ‘Who are they, Uncle?’ asked Fred.

  Scrooge had no answer.

  ‘Ignorance,’ said Sam. ‘My name’s Ignorance. This is my sister, Want.’

  Everyone exchanged puzzled looks – all except Scrooge, who smiled sadly at Sam as a maid arrived with bowls of soup.

  Neither Sam nor Lizzie thought they would be able to eat and Lizzie had to be helped at first, but soon the soup worked its magic, warming their innards and dissolving the fog that still clung to their brains.

  ‘Sam?’ whispered Lizzie. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Sam you say?’ said Scrooge. ‘Of course! How d’you do, Samuel! And you must be Elizabeth. Ha! Oh my word, but how the fates are playing with us all!’

  ‘How does he know who we are?’ said Lizzie.

  ‘This is Samuel and Elizabeth Hunter,’ said Scrooge to those around him. ‘Ha! Who would believe it?’

  Lizzie stared at Sam in confusion.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Sam told her. ‘Everything’s all right.’

  ‘Are they spirits?’ she said, peering suspiciously at the crowd that sat watching them eat.

  ‘No, Liz. I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ said Scrooge.

  ‘Yes, I heard,’ Sam replied.

  Scrooge smiled and peered at him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘From our mutual friend, no doubt?’

  ‘He’s no friend of mine.’

  Scrooge frowned and nodded.

  ‘What on earth is all this about, Uncle?’ said Fred. ‘Is no one going to explain what’s going on?’

  ‘Well,’ said Scrooge, ‘why don’t we all sit ourselves down and I shall try.’

  The whole audience leaned in expectantly as Scrooge began his tale. He took a little while to start, his jaw and lips chewing over the words before they came out.

  ‘Some of you remember my old partner, Jacob Marley, do you?’ said Scrooge finally.

  Fred and Bob Cratchit exchanged a frown. Scrooge winked at Sam and Lizzie, and so they took this cue to keep silent.

  ‘Ha! Jacob was an acquired taste,’ said Scrooge with a chuckle. ‘For most it was a bitter taste they did not try again. But I liked him, though he did not want me to, I think. Admired him too, though he did not want my approval either.

  ‘He was a good businessman and that, in those days, was everything to me. He showed me all I needed to know of the business and I was an eager student.’

  Sam saw tears glistening in the old man’s eyes.

  ‘Jacob trusted more and more of the business to me and he kept only a few cases as he neared the days of his retirement. He had no family and I was both surprised and honoured to discover that he had left the business to me in its entirety upon his death.

  ‘He was a careful investor and frugal in his own living. He had inherited a considerable fortune from his parents and seemingly did not spend a fraction of it. In fact, he seems to have taken as much pleasure in not spending his money as another might derive from a lifetime of excess.

  ‘So Jacob died a wealthy man. On going through his effects, I discovered a curious box containing papers relating to a certain man who had failed to repay his debts or keep up the payments – a not uncommon occurrence.

  ‘This man had been sent to the Marshalsea as a debtor and had died soon thereafter of jail fever, along with his poor wife, who had chosen to join him there.

  ‘Jacob was a man whom I had thought was hardened to the work we did, and yet this case had clearly affected him. It had eaten away at him for all those years. He had tried to find the children of that sorry couple: Samuel and Elizabeth – these children you see here.’

  ‘What?’ said Sam. ‘The living Marley?’

  Scrooge nodded.

  ‘What does he mean by that?’ whispered Mrs Cratchit to her husband. ‘The living Marley?’

  ‘Shhh, my dear,’ said Bob. ‘Let Mr Scrooge continue.’

  ‘Marley had tried to find them,’ Scrooge went on, ‘and help them – to try to make some recompense for the savage blow that had been dealt them. But he failed.

  ‘He had placed them with friends, but the children had run away. He tried every avenue, every poorhouse, but without any luck. They had disappeared from the face of the earth, and Jacob was left with the guilt of it, wondering what terrible fate had befallen them.

  ‘I confess I was a little bemused by the discovery of a soft heart beating in the chest of my codfish of a partner, but I decided that I would honour his intentions and place his savings and the moneys from the sale of his effects into a trust on their behalf.

  ‘I do not think I ever expected that these children would come to claim it – how could they, not knowing its existence? – but it felt wrong to reallocate it against Jacob’s wishes.’

  ‘It sounds as though you had a softer heart than you would have admitted to, even then, Uncle,’ said his nephew with a smile.

  This was answered with another twinkle of tears from the old man.

  ‘I wish I could say that was true, Fred,’ said Scrooge seriously. ‘I really do. But I was lost. Utterly lost. I made no attempt to find them. Until now . . .’

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ said his nephew. ‘If Jacob had tried and failed to find them, how did you succeed? How did you know where to look, and what brought them to your house?’

  Scrooge smiled at Sam and Lizzie.

  ‘I think a mutual friend must have told these children of my search.’

  Sam nodded.

  Everyone in the room looked more mystified than before the tale was begun, and Fred shook his head in puzzlement. What ‘mutual friend’ could a man like Scrooge have with urchins like these? But Fred was so very pleased with the change that had come over his uncle that neither he, nor anyone else, wished to question any part of it too intently for fear of breaking the spell.

  ‘You are – or you will be – very wealthy indeed,’ said Scrooge to Sam and Lizzie. ‘You are too young yet to inherit the money but –’

  ‘Wealthy?’ said Lizzie. ‘Us?’

  Scrooge grinned and nodded.

  ‘I swear it!’

  ‘Well, wealthy or not,’ said Fred’s wife, ‘these children need a bath and those clothes need burning. Lord knows what wildlife they have brought with them. Will you help me, Mrs Cratchit?’

  ‘Happily, ma’am,’ said Mrs Cratchit, who had been furtively scratching for the last ten minutes.

  Despite all Sam and Lizzie’s protestations, water was boiled, a tub and soap were fetched and the two of them were scrubbed one after another, Lizzie by the women and Sam by Bob and Fred.

  Their clothes were indeed thrown on the fire – and a terrible stench they made in t
he burning. Mrs Cratchit and Fred’s wife were sent off in search of new clothes and they returned in an hour with some items borrowed from friends with children of a similar size. The children when they reappeared were all but unrecognisable as the grubby waifs who had entered the house hours before. The faintest trace of colour was even appearing in Lizzie’s face. Sam’s expression was still far from cheerful, however.

  ‘I sense some unease,’ said Scrooge. ‘I had thought you might be more excited to discover you were to become a man of means.’

  Sam took a deep breath and let it out falteringly.

  ‘I suppose I don’t feel like I deserve it,’ he replied.

  ‘Did you think I deserved the money I had?’ said Scrooge. ‘Or Marley? Honestly?’

  ‘No,’ said Sam.

  Bob Cratchit’s eyes widened.

  ‘Ha!’ said Fred with a hearty chortle.

  Scrooge chuckled merrily and Sam, despite himself, joined in. Lizzie laughed and so did Tiny Tim, who had sat himself down nearby to marvel at these new visitors. The other Cratchit children settled down beside him.

  ‘Then do something to deserve it, boy,’ said Scrooge. ‘Use your money well. Money can be used for good, you know. I realise you have every reason to believe otherwise, but it can.’

  ‘Uncle is right, lad,’ said Fred. ‘I myself am involved in many schemes to help the poor and the working man.’

  ‘And the working woman, my dear,’ said his wife.

  ‘Of course,’ said Fred.

  Sam looked from face to face until he reached Lizzie’s, and then he closed his eyes and nodded.

  ‘I will,’ he said. ‘I will use it for good. I swear. All of you can hold me to it.’

  Tiny Tim clapped his hands at this thought. He seemed eager to ensure that Sam kept his word and Sam laughed – which only made him clap all the more excitedly.

  ‘But you will not inherit the money for a while,’ said Scrooge. ‘And until you do . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ said Lizzie, a worried look on her face.

  ‘Until then, I should like you to live here with me.’

  Sam and Lizzie stared at him in wonder.

  ‘If, of course, you would like to,’ he added.

  Sam and Lizzie looked around at the room: the fire raging in the hearth, the choir of smiling children’s faces, the kindly twinkle in Scrooge’s eye.

  ‘Yes!’ said Sam. ‘I mean, please, sir. Yes.’

  Lizzie jumped to her feet and threw her arms round the old man’s neck, making him splutter and huff most comically. Everyone in the room laughed once again.

  ‘Bless you!’ said Lizzie.

  ‘God bless us, every one!’ said Tiny Tim.

  And Sam, not known for such displays, went over and embraced the old gentleman himself, and when he did, it felt like a great weight had dropped from him all at once, for until then he had not understood how very heavy hate can be.

  Now we must travel years ahead, since we, like spirits, can move through time in our imaginings. We find ourselves once more outside Scrooge’s house, although it is a house much changed in the interim.

  Snow is falling and the street is thick with it, but the dark and foreboding house of old has been cleaned and given a new suit of paint, with a shining front door of holly green on which the curious old brass knocker still hangs. This door knocker was the one thing Scrooge insisted must remain unchanged when he bought the whole building and had it renovated.

  Opening the door we find it is Christmas once again, but a Christmas a dozen years hence. The hall is decked in holly and ivy and a colossal Christmas tree pokes its way upwards towards the skylight above the stairwell.

  We can hear children’s voices echo around those walls – walls so long starved of such delights. For a house can starve as well as any man or woman, child or babe in arms, if love is denied it.

  But this love-starved place has been reborn. The word ‘merry’ could never have been associated with the Scrooge of old, but this house could be an illustration to the word in a dictionary. It is a veritable Christmas card, and we now step into it.

  People who shunned this house in earlier times long for an invite to one of the many parties held here through the year, and everyone agrees that no more hospitable a household exists in all London.

  The owners of the childish voices come giggling and scampering down the stairs. They cannot see us. We walk unseen as though we too are brought here by spirits, and they run through our bodies as through mist.

  The door opens behind us and Sam enters. He is a man now, grown to his full height with a handsome face, broader than it was and, though older, softer in its features.

  His expression, as he walks in, is thoughtful, haunted by a trace of sadness. He has been to visit Jacob Marley’s grave, as he does every Christmas Day (and many days between). The headstone is clean now and a rose grows where nought but moss and nettles were to be seen.

  Sam has not seen Marley’s ghost again, but this has been a source of happiness rather than regret, because he knows that this must mean his benefactor finally found peace and sleeps soundly now, untroubled by spirits or guilt.

  Sam has no religion, though he tried so as to please Lizzie and Scrooge. He has no belief in heaven, but knows that Marley suffered a kind of hell before his release. He has no explanation for the wonders he experienced, but he embraces the mystery as a friend.

  What forces were at work that Christmas Eve he cannot guess, but he felt something old moved among them – something that went back well before these houses and streets and churches were built.

  Sometimes he thinks it was the combined yearnings of them all, conjuring up these spirits to be the means of their own salvation. Mostly, he just accepts his new fate gratefully, and does not think of the fate he dodged or the means of its avoidance.

  Scrooge was good to his word and they lived happily with him for many years. Sam still lives here with Scrooge and declares that he has no intentions of living anywhere else. No son and father could be more devoted to each other than Sam and Scrooge.

  Scrooge himself taught Sam to read and, more than that, showed him the power of books to mould a man and to shape the imagination. Sam’s world grew and grew with each book he finished.

  He inherited his fortune and was shocked to discover just how wealthy he had, that instant, become. But he too was true to his word and set about, from that day, putting the money to some good.

  With help from Scrooge and Fred, Sam has supported charities that help the homeless and the destitute. With their assistance he has, moreover, set up an institute – the Marley Institute – that contains a lending library and provides courses for the education and advancement of the poor.

  Carved in Portland stone above the door are the words: Ignorance and Want: beware them both, but beware Ignorance most of all. A vicar from the nearby church enquired as to what text Sam had taken these words from.

  ‘Experience,’ he answered, much to the bemusement of the vicar.

  Now Sam climbs the stairs and his mood is lifted at each step as he hears the happy, familiar voices of those who were witness to the transformation of his fortunes and have been such steadfast friends ever since.

  Here is Lizzie, now twenty years old, grown into beauty, which she wears with a light and easy charm. She stands beside her husband, a lawyer who lives in chambers nearby. He is a good man, a little nervous still of the family all about him. He sees how she looks at the children and catches her eye, making her blush.

  Here is Fred, Scrooge’s nephew, whose laugh could match the Ghost of Christmas Present’s for volume and jollity. He never lost faith in his uncle and loved him despite receiving little by way of affection in return. Scrooge has done his level best to make reparation for this failing in the years since the visitation of the spirits, and everyone remarks on how close they are as uncle and nephew.

  And Fred’s wife, who despaired of Fred’s soft-heartedness towards Scrooge, now loves the old man as much as he. He
re she sits with their son and daughter, playing a little harp and singing them a song.

  Here is Bob Cratchit, looking a little fuller in the figure than the man he once was. Here are his wife and his children, all grown up now – Martha and Belinda with husbands and children of their own. Peter is in the navy and stands in his uniform, home from the wars. The two smallest are now as tall as their father, their taste for mischief undiminished.

  Here, especially, is Tiny Tim, the sickly boy whose life would surely have been forfeit had not Scrooge seen the error of his selfish ways and taken a special interest in his fortunes. No one would have dared to believe it possible that he might be here yet, standing among them still – not rude of health, but far from the sickly lad he was.

  Sam has been like an uncle to the boy and a kindly one at that, despite the fact that he is only a few years older than Tim himself. But Sam’s experiences have made him older than his years. Even Fred defers to him occasionally. Tim is the only one who can ever persuade Sam to talk about his life on the streets, and when he does, Tim sits in rapt attention, like a snake to a charmer’s flute. And the reason Sam will tell him the stories is because he knows that Tim sees them not as entertaining anecdotes, but for what they are – searing hot coals pulled from the terrible furnace of Sam’s memory. Tim knows the pain and because he knows the pain, he helps to heal it.

  Only one chair in the room remains empty, next to the fire. It is the chair old Scrooge occupied that night the spirits came, and though he exchanged most of his drab old furniture for new, the old man kept this chair as a reminder of how low he had once been. Sam and Lizzie look towards the chair in memory of that night.

  But fear not, here comes Scrooge now, a smile on his lips. The old man is with us still and seems, if anything, more sprightly than he did all those years ago when lovelessness had crooked his back and pinched his face. There are more lines on that face than before, but they track the passage of smiles and laughter now.

  He holds a book in his hand and sits down, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. He looks up at Sam, who smiles back, taking a seat with all the others. An expectant hush greets the opening of the book, as the candlelight flickers over the gilt embossed letters on the cover. Scrooge always reads them a ghost story on Christmas Eve. It is a tradition and a fine one at that.