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Christmas Story - Not So Tiny Tim - John Mortimer
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Christmas Story - Not So Tiny Tim - John Mortimer
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I never keep Christmas. In fact, I throw it away. I always found that if you kept Christmas, it went bad quite quickly. The speaker was Sir Timothy Cratchit, entertaining his guests at lunch in the shade of a spreading fig tree in the courtyard of his new home in a North African town. Outside, the high midday sun beat remorselessly against the white walls. It was Christmas Day in the year 1894. That is why, Sir Timothy went on, I have chosen to live in a country without holly or snow or carol singers. He was a short gray haired man whose phenomenal success in the city had led to a knighthood and early retirement. A childhood illness had left him lame, but the thanks to a brilliant high street surgeon, he could walk with no more help than that of the silver topped ebony cane which now lay on the flagstones beside his chair. Above all, in a country without turkey. He selected a peach from a bowl held by a pool eyed young Arab in a white jalaba and began to peel it carefully. When I was a child, some foolish fellow gave us a huge beast of a turkey bird about the size of a brontosaurus for Christmas. Cold turkey, turkey pies, turkey rissoles. It seemed we lived on nothing else until the springtime. I also ignore Christmas. One of the guests was pale and overweight with dark curling hair parted in the middle, and spoke in a curious Irish sing song with many high notes and dramatic pauses. In fact, my dear Timothy, the only festival of a church I keep is Septuagint. He dwelt long and lovingly on the word, and an elderly man at the end of a table, a Colonel Picton, military advisor to the local bay, gave the speaker his longed for feed line. You know, Oscar, I haven't kept sceptre jessamine since I was a boy. Oh, my dear Picton, Oscar Wilde enjoyed saying, not for the first time, do take my advice and be a boy again. And as there is no Christmas Day here, Sir Timothy was smiling as he watched with some amusement the efforts of an even smaller Arab servant, perhaps no more than 10 years old, to lift a jeroboam of Dom Perignon and fill the tall flute glasses. One feels no need to go about doing good deeds for the poor. No turkey and no good deeds. What a happy escape we've made from London. And then, in spite of the sun's warmth and the comforting champagne, he shivered as if some chilling memory couldn't entirely escape. It was as though he felt again the numbing cold of a London street and the weight of an iron on his small crippled leg. He watched his father, his long white muffler flying behind him in the wind, sliding on a patch of ice in Corn Hill. And he remembered wondering with a calm intelligence far beyond his years how a grown man could behave so childishly. He remembered feeling ill, very ill, and seeing the tear stained faces of his family and thinking how oppressive their looks of pity were. Then he remembered the monstrous bird that had arrived from Ebenezer Scrooge, his father's employer, and the tears this time of joy his lacrimose family had shed over the vast cadaver. He remembered his father's rise in salary, pitifully small, he now realized, which had finally released his leg from his fetters. He remembered when he got his first job, he in Scrooge's office and became the most junior member of Scrooge and Marley. It soon became obvious to him that Ebenezer Scrooge, once a ruthless and successful businessman, had gone soft. Since that fatal Christmas when he was suddenly converted to good works, he no longer foreclosed mortgages or bankrupted his debtors. The bad debts multiplied and a substantial part of the profits of his business were wiped out by charitable donations, including a large sum spent on the provision of Christmas turkeys to the needy. At the age of 17, Timothy Cratchit made it his business to hang about the change, performing small errands for Ebenezer. And because he was young and appeared harmless, he overheard much gossip and many valuable rumors. One day he borrowed the turkey fund over which he had been given control, invested it for a month in Oriental railways and made 200% profit before the company crashed. From then on, nobody called him Tiny Tim. He'd taken his first step towards that private fortune which would enable him to buy out Ebenezer, retire his father on an adequate but by no means generous pension, and be rewarded with a title for services to the Conservative Party. He was a child of the hungry 1840s and a rich man in the frivolous 90s. It was wild who had told him of the delights of North Africa? So he had restored an old vizier's palace near to the sea. It was a home such as neither Bob Cratchit nor Ebenezer Scrooge had ever dreamed of. It was at this point in the quick pursuit of memory that Sir Timothy was startled by a crash and the sound of broken glass. The youngest waiter had dropped a huge bottle of Dom Perignon on the flagstones and his small feet were surrounded by green shards and a sea of fizz. It was a question of buying a goodbye present for Wilde, who was going back to London for the rehearsals of the Importance of Being Earnest. Don't give me anything in good taste, dear boy, his guest had said in a prophetic moment. Too much good taste leads to prison. So Sir Timothy was in one of the better shops in the Casbah, bargaining for a dagger with a jewel encrusted handle, an object of genuine vulgarity which Wilde could use as a paper knife. He was about to turn away when he saw a small child barring his way. It was the tiny waiter, the little Arab who had dropped the champagne. Not much older, Sir Timothy thought uncomfortably, than he had been on the night of the momentous Turkey. Even then he would have pushed his way out. But the boy started to explain rapidly. Little Mahmoud had lost his post with my Lord Anglais because he had dropped a bottle of wine. He was, it appeared, the sole wage earner of his enormous family. If the milord would give him back his position, Mahmoud would never, never again drop anything, however heavy. He would, moreover, work twice as hard and for half the wages. Sir Timothy paused for a moment, looking at a child in whom he saw something of his former self. Then he raised his ebony cane to clear himself a passage and limped as fast as he could out of the bazaar. That night, the night of the 25th of December, the wind changed. There was a clap of thunder and flashes of lightning across the sea. In the city, Sir Timothy went to bed, sleepy from pigeons in almond paste and pink wine from Mekness. He'd been bored by his servant's exhibition of belly dancing and had fallen quickly asleep. Within an hour, it seemed to him he was awake again. At first he thought it was only his bed curtains stirring in the wind. And then, as lightning cracked across the window panes, he saw two figures looking down at him. The first was tall and stately, shrouded in a black garment which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing visible but one outstretched hand. The other was an elderly, hatchet faced man with grey whiskers who wore a nightgown, bedroom slippers, and had a white woollen cap to cover his baldness. Sir Timothy had no difficulty in recognizing Ebenezer Scrooge, who had died over 30 years before in his retirement home in Brighton. The time has come, Timothy Scrooge said in the high, snuffling voice which had been his when he was alive, for you to meet the ghost of Christmas yet to Come. Is that truly you, Scrooge? Sir Timothy had never, even in his most risky business Dealings shown fear, and faced with these figures of death, he was more curious than overawed. And are you truly dead? As truly as you will be, Tiny Tim. So even beyond the grave must you be forever prattling about Christmas? We're going to be given a vision, Scrooge told him of Christmas to come. Sir Timothy felt Scrooge's cold hand fasten around his wrist like a fetter. As with supernatural strength, Scrooge pulled him out of bed and towards the window. Where d' ye want me to go? He managed, in his astonishment at this violent arrest, to ask. Almost a century away, the spirit spoke in low, resonant tones. Come. And then, as the casement rattled and flew open in the wind, the three of them seemed to float out of it as though they had lost all earthly weight. The sights he saw on the journey would remain with Sir Timothy for the rest of his life and even haunt his spirit after death. At first they flew across Africa in the early light of dawn, over earth that would no longer bear crops, where little children in their thousands with great bald heads, swollen bodies and matchstick legs died in the arms of their starving mothers. They flew into Europe and saw guns everywhere. In countries which had once been civilized, they saw women ravished and children bombed and strangled. They saw the poor supplies of food stolen by robbers or politicians and sold to the highest bidder, flitting across more prosperous countries, they saw great stores of wheat and wine and heard a congress of finance ministers explaining that they couldn't possibly afford to send food to the starving multitudes. With the speed of a sigh, they crossed a great ocean and came to a country where the young killed and robbed for drugs and shops were smashed and left burning. In one looted store, they saw the tinsel hanging the tawdry remains of Christmas Day. And then they were back after 99 years and no time. In the Timothy's bedroom, the ghosts of Scrooge and the ghost of future Christmases stood at the foot of his bed. And the man who had long ago been Tiny Tim looked at them, greatly troubled. You showed me what I had no desire to see, he protested. When the time comes, everyone will see all of that and more. The spirit boomed. Everyone's living room will be filled with images of the suffering of the world. When shall I die? Sir Timothy dared to ask. Christmas Day, 1922, in time for the Great War, but too early for television. You will suffer a heart attack after dinner in Raffles Hotel, Singapore. Oh, then I shall be spared the sight of all that misery. Ebenezer Scrooge died many years ago, but I haven't spared him. He has to learn that the provision of turkeys is no answer. There simply aren't enough turkeys to go round. I could have told him that. Sir Timothy was encouraged to find himself in agreement with the spirit. Giving turkeys really doesn't do much good. But what does? What does good, in your opinion? The spirit had moved very close to him, so close that he could see a pair of deep set, smouldering eyes and shadow under his hood. I'm not sure. Sir Timothy faltered now. Afraid I'll give Mahmoud back his job. Will that be something? Something, I suppose, but not very much. All I can tell you to do is to look about. You see everything, however much it distresses you or turns your stomach so men and women like you may change a little. It's all we can hope for. The spirit and the ghost of the old man began to move towards the window. Sir Timothy watched their departure with considerable relief. But the spirit's parting words made him shiver. We shall go out again in a year's time and see if there's been any improvement. The open window banged again in a wind and his extraordinary visitors were gone. Sir Timothy crept back into bed and pulled the embroidered covers over his head. It was only, he thought with genuine terror, 364 days till Christmas.