a story from The Edge Of Christmas

“What if Father Christmas forgot someone?”

here is a house just out of sight, a house built upon a bend in the road, which cannot be seen from the north as surely as it cannot be seen from the south.

In the summer, the trees around grow thick and hide it from walkers.

In the winter, the snows fall heavy and hide it from travellers.

In the spring and in the autumn, the fall of water thawing and leaves dropping hide the house from the misplaced.

This is a house where no lights shine, no smoke rises and no doors or windows open to allow the passage of people or air.

But it is not a house entirely forgotten by human hearts. For on one day and one night each year, a face appears at a window.

On the one day, it appears downstairs, peering wide-eyed through the dirty pane like an old photograph left out in the sun.

On the one night, it appears upstairs, peering bleary-eyed through curtains which part like bark around the knot of a tree.

When the face appears on this particular night, the rest of the world is asleep. Two tiny, dark eyes search what little skies have managed to leak through the heavy lace of branches and snow. They are old eyes in a youthful face. They carry the look of someone both hopeful and realistic, someone searching for shooting stars but expecting clouds. They take in the night sky for a while.

Nothing moves. It is the same as every other night for the face at the window of the hidden house. The face pulls back from the window and a thin hand tightens the curtains, as though the night was its idea.

‘Well, that took me a while and I’m sorry for that, young lady.’

The tiny eyes turn and widen, and the thin hand covers an open mouth. She looks into the gloom of her bedroom with its high iron bed, wooden floor and tiled fireplace.

‘It’s you. It’s really you,’ says the little girl in a voice as soft as snow falling.

There’s no mistaking who the voice belongs to. No strangers can find this house. No maps have ever pinned it to their jackets. It belongs to a jolly-looking man who fills the space between fireplace and bed.

‘Yes, it is. I am most certainly me. But I’m unsure of who you are. Unsure of anything about you except for the plain fact that you must be you as surely as I am me. And I don’t know how that can be.’

The little girl makes a little curtsey. Her eyes are still wide as stars. ‘Well, I’m just Lorna, sir. Are you really really real?’ she adds in a whisper.

The old man lets out a laugh. It is the sound of thunder on a summer day. He has a beard as wild as thoughts at 2 am and as white as snowdrifts on a moonlit night. His clothes are the colour of cherries in a blackbird’s mouth.

‘Real, dear Lorna, real? Everything is real. Even dreams are real.’

Lorna looked worried. Last night she had dreamed of being chased by three enormous sugar cubes who ran after her on their little white legs, waving their little white arms.

The old man looks at Lorna and smiles. Beside him is a plump, pear of a sack. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘After you woke, they all went deep tea diving and were never seen again.’

‘Diving? In tea?’ Lorna cocks her head to one side and her mouth shifts around as though trying to get comfortable. ‘That’s silly.’

‘Oh, it happens more than you might expect. There are entire oceans of tea. On the other side of Sugar Loaf Mountain, in fact. I have to fly over them every year. Ask your parents. I’m sure they will know.’

Lorna’s mouth dips a little at the mention of her parents and the old man lowers himself to the hard wooden floor. He sits with a grunt beside a fireplace dusty with cold moon rock embers.

‘Shall we have a fire?’ He says. ‘Warm the old place up a bit. We could make tea then. Or hot milk. Whatever you like. I’m very thirsty.’

‘I thought people left wine out for you,’ Lorna says, squinting to look at the old man through one eye.

‘Plant pots, my dear. That’s the secret. I wouldn’t get far if I were to drink every glass of wine left out for me. So, any tea?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not allowed to touch the kettle.’

‘Ah, of course. Quite right. Quite sensible. Where are your parents, by the way? I’m not sensing anybody else here. I usually know exactly to the person. Important for a man in my position to know these things. Can’t leave a soul un-presented, now can I? Thought I never had either, until I found this place. And you.’

Lorna walks over to the old man and sits herself down in front of him. Her nightdress catches the dark and holds it with long, sooty fingers.

‘They will be home soon. They went out on my birthday.’

‘Your birthday! How marvellous. Christmas and birthday all in one big box. You must be very excited.’ The old man claps his hands and laughs his laugh and the room feels a little brighter.

‘Oh no. My birthday is in summer. I’m sure they will come back for my next birthday. I look out of the window for them once a year.’ Lorna leans in and whispers. ‘And I look out of the window to catch you at Christmas.’

‘Oh, I know you do, Lorna child. At least, I do now. This house is quite hard to find. And I thought I could see everywhere. I wonder for how long it’s been hidden from me.’

‘I make a mark on the floor for each birthday and Christmas. I’m learning to count. Mamma was teaching me. I can count all the way to three hundred and fifty-seven.’ Lorna gives the old man a serious look and points to the scratches on the floor. ‘How many can you count up to?’

‘Not as many as that. What a lot of years you’ve counted, Lorna. Once, I tried to count all the presents I gave away but I got too hungry and forgot where I’d begun.’

‘Well that’s silly,’ Lorna says. ‘Everybody knows you begin at number one.’

‘Ah, that makes sense. So there you go. I can count to one. I shall try to remember that.’

‘I can help. Watch.’ Lorna leans over and takes a tiny piece of blackened wood from the fireplace. She draws a single line on the floor with it. ‘There. One. My first real Christmas. You can remember that.’

The old man rumbles a laugh out into the room and man and girl watch it escape up the dark chimney. ‘Remember it, Lorna? I’ll think of this as my first Christmas too. For you have given me a gift, and I’ve never had a gift before.’

Lorna’s face lights up. ‘Have I? However did I do that?’

‘I have met every person in every house who has ever lived. I’ve been in every house on every street. I’ve visited every street in every village, town and city in every country on every continent. And what’s more, I know I’ll meet every person who ever will live. It’s a life with so much joy but no surprises. At least, that’s what I used to think. Until I found you. Little Lorna in the house on the bend in the road.’

‘I surprised you?’ Lorna says. ‘Oh! I surprised you.’ She leans back and bangs her feet on the floor. One, two. One, two, one-two.

‘You have, Lorna. You are a big surprise. And there is so much more I still don’t know. How do you live here, all alone? How do you eat?’

At this, Lorna laughs and flops onto her back. ‘Oh silly. Children don’t eat. We get hungry and then just forget the time.’

Suddenly, she sits upright. Like an old woman about to get out of a rocking chair. ‘You smell funny. Like old fires.’

The old man puts his nose to his clothes and sniffs noisily. His beard spreads across the blood red velvet like fine cracks across a window. ‘I do, don’t I? Goes with the job, really. Would you like me to light a fire?’

‘Oh no. There’s no firewood anymore. Papa went to get some. Mamma went to fetch a chicken for my birthday and Papa said he’d fetch the wood.’ Lorna looks to the window where the shadows are playing with a thin slice of moonlight, pawing it like a cat will paw a fish in a pool. ‘I expect they just got a little lost.’

‘I expect they did.’ The old man says.

‘Shouldn’t you be getting along?’ Lorna jabs a finger into the old man’s tummy. ‘Don’t you have other children to visit?’

‘Oh, there’s time. There’s always time. Once a year, just for an instant, everybody shares the same moment right across the world: the Christmas moment. Oh, people remember it differently of course. Some think they stayed up past midnight, some think it was the middle of the day. But that’s just memory, and memory is often wrong.’

The old man knocks on the floor of Lorna’s bedroom. ‘But I think this place is different. I think even Time can’t remember this place. I don’t know what will happen when I leave.’

Lorna claps her hands together. ‘Another surprise,’ she says.

He laughs again and tiny flames lift their heads in the fireplace, lions roaring once before falling back to sleep. ‘Yes, another surprise. There are surprises for everyone, tonight. Don’t you want to know what your surprise is, Lorna?’

‘Should I? I don’t know if I should or shouldn’t. Mamma and Papa always said Christmas would come next year when I was a bit more growed up. They said they were saving for that year. Am I growed up now? Am I to get a surprise?’

‘Not grown up, Lorna. Just grown up enough. All children get to have at least one Christmas before they grow up, and I think you’ve been waiting far too long for yours.’

The old man gets to his feet. ‘Far too long. Christmas comes but once a year, my dear, but it does come – for everyone.’ He pulls the sack across the wooden floor. It makes the sound of a sleigh gliding over snow and he huffs and puffs with the effort. His red face glows as he dips his hand in, rummaging around without looking. ‘I think… perhaps… I wonder if… ah…’ he says, and lifts out his hand. ‘Ah yes.’

The old man offers a square parcel to the girl. It is no larger than a child’s shoebox and is wrapped in faded purple paper. There is a pattern of faint cream flowers on the parcel, but no ribbon, just a tag which reads “for Lorna”.

Lorna takes it. Her hands are like a farmer’s gathering eggs. Her fingers are like a sculptor’s, deciding where to chisel first. The paper falls away to reveal a sturdy wooden box, hinged with a single gilt hinge. There is no lock to the box and Lorna finds it easy to lift the lid.

In an instant as short as childhood, her face transforms. She smiles the smile a child might trace on a frosty window pane. A fire roars to life in the grate and warmth fills the little bedroom. She laughs every laugh she has wanted to for three hundred and fifty-seven years.

The old man watches. He sees the string of Christmases Lorna might have had she lived in a different house. ‘Surprise,’ he says, to himself.

The little girl puts the box upon the floor and reaches both hands inside. The old man pulls a million wonders into the world each year, but Lorna has only ever done this once. She breathes deeply and lifts out two carved wooden figures.

One figure is of a woman with a chicken under her arm. The other is of a man with a woodcutter’s axe. They are shiny and worn, as though handled and loved for centuries.

‘Thank you,’ says Lorna. The room is empty. The fire has died down, but her face is still lit by the smile. ‘Thank you,’ she says again and walks to her bed, clutching the woodcutter and the chicken lady to her chest.

Once there, all the forgotten years arrive to gather her up in that perfect moment when Christmas found her.

There is a house just out of sight, a house built upon a bend in the road, which cannot be seen from the north as surely as it cannot be seen from the south. It is a house almost entirely forgotten.

Almost, but not quite.

For everyone gets at least one Christmas.

—

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