The Last of the Spirits (8 page)

Sam sobbed and took hold of the phantom’s bony hand and held it against his face, and all at once the spirit disappeared and Sam found himself back under the table with Lizzie asleep beside him.

Sam looked out from under the tablecloth, half expecting it to be the robes of the giant once again. But no, it was a tablecloth and nothing more. The room was dull and ordinary, as it had been when they first entered. It was as it must have been every day – dusty and neglected. There was not the least sign that it had ever been home to magic. Or so he thought at first.

‘Sam?’ said Lizzie, waking up. ‘What’s happening? I had a nightmare.’

‘
Shhh
, Liz,’ said Sam gently, putting his arm round her. ‘It’s all right. You’re with me now. Sweet Lizzie.’

Sam kissed her on the forehead and held her tightly, tears springing to his eyes as he did so. Lizzie returned his embrace and when they parted she searched his face, looking for some explanation for this change in him.

‘Sam? What’s happened?’

‘I’m sorry, Liz,’ he said. ‘Sorry I . . . I . . .’

Lizzie hugged him again, even tighter.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘We’ll always be together, won’t we?’

Sam sobbed into her shoulder.

Lizzie gasped. ‘There’s someone there!’

She was right. Sam’s eyes had not yet adjusted to the gloom, and so he did not at first appreciate that what he took to be some large piece of furniture at the other end of the room was in fact the spirit they had encountered earlier with Scrooge on that barren wasteland.

‘It’s the giant,’ he whispered.

‘I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,’ said the giant. ‘You have travelled with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.’

Sam nodded solemnly.

‘What does he mean, Sam?’ said Lizzie, then dropping to a whisper she added, ‘And why doesn’t he look so old now?’

Sam saw that she was correct. The giant’s hair and beard were no longer grey but a lusty chestnut brown, and his muscular body was evident beneath his robes, which were open a little to reveal a broad and hairy chest. His face was ruddy and he seemed to glow like a fire. Where he had once looked like a King of Winter, he now seemed to be a guardian of life in winter’s death.

‘You have been educated by your journey with the spirit?’ asked the Ghost of Christmas Present.

‘Yes,’ said Sam. ‘I have.’

The giant smiled weakly.

‘But where are we now?’ said Sam. ‘You are younger than you were. How come you’re still here, then? Shouldn’t your turn have been done?’

The giant smiled.

‘We are in the workings of Time here, Sam,’ said the spirit. ‘We are behind the clock face, lad. We are among the cogs. We are in the was, is and will be all at once.

‘Scrooge is with my fellow spirit, glimpsing scenes from the years yet to come, as you have done. Like you, he will see things that will reach into his very soul.’

Sam’s throat dried at the thought of what he had seen and he felt the hemp against his neck once more and shuddered.

‘What does he mean?’ said Lizzie. ‘You’ve been here all the time, haven’t you? Sam, wait . . . my nightmare. There was a tall man in a black robe that came and . . . Oh, Sam, what’s happening?’

‘It’s all right,’ said Sam. ‘We have to go.’

‘Can we?’ She grabbed his arm. ‘All these ghosts are giving me the creeps. No offence,’ she added, looking at the giant.

He laughed a great booming laugh that shook the windows in their frames.

‘None taken.’

‘Come on,’ said Sam. ‘Scrooge’ll be back before we know it.’

‘And you leave empty-handed?’ cried the spirit. ‘There is none shall stop you. Scrooge is not here and I shall not stand in your way. Does the old man’s wealth not make you angry?’

‘No,’ said Sam. He smiled to find that it was true.

‘But why should this old miser have all that money and you go without?’ said the giant. ‘Is it fair?’

Sam felt he was being mocked and some of his resentment returned.

‘It’s still not fair!’ he said angrily. ‘You ain’t going to say it is! But I’ll not be the one to take it from him, whether he deserves it or not.’

The giant nodded slowly. Sam calmed himself once more and spoke quietly now.

‘I ain’t never going to think well of that man,’ said Sam. ‘No one cares about him. No one likes him. No one would miss him if he was gone.’

‘You know this for a fact?’ said the giant. ‘What about the man he employs?’

‘Ha! The man he pays a pittance to, no doubt,’ said Sam, ‘and threatened to fire on Christmas Eve? The man he keeps like a dog? You’re telling me that he gives a toss about that old weasel?’

‘Come,’ said the giant, holding out his hand. ‘Let us see. Let’s visit Cratchit the clerk. Or dare you not be proved wrong?’

‘Sam?’ said Lizzie nervously.

‘All right,’ said Sam, rising to the challenge. ‘Let’s have a look.’

Sam and Lizzie reached out together and touched the giant’s robe. The next instant they were standing in a poorer part of town outside the Cratchits’ four-roomed house, the giant Ghost of Christmas Present illuminating the scene with a curious flaming torch he held in his hand.

The giant shook the torch and shining droplets rained down on to the humble dwelling. The building seemed to grow a little at this blessing and the street to brighten.

‘What is that, sir?’ said Lizzie. ‘That stuff what comes from the torch?’

‘It is the essence of joy and good fellowship,’ said the giant. ‘Only a very small amount is needed.’

‘You can make people happy and friendly, then?’

The giant shook his head.

‘I remind them of the happiness and friendship they had forgotten,’ he said. ‘That is all.’

‘Pah!’ said Sam. ‘What good is there in feeling happy one day if you go back to how you were the next?’

‘What harm is there?’ said the giant.

Sam scowled but did not reply.

The giant walked towards the house and the children held on to his robes and were, like him, magically carried inside, the giant bent double and filling half the room, unseen by all but Sam and Lizzie.

The Cratchits did not see the spirit’s torch but they felt its glow and the whole house was infused with a joy that belied its meagreness. Even Sam could feel the warmth.

They beheld a scene of cheerful chaos as the family tended to the coming meal. The eldest son, Peter, was in charge of a pan of potatoes as the two youngest Cratchits ran in yelling that they had stood outside the baker’s and smelled the goose in the oven and were as sure as sure could be that it was definitely the Cratchit goose they smelled.

Bob Cratchit and his invalid son, Tim – Tiny Tim they called him – were not present and Mrs Cratchit wondered aloud what might be keeping them as the lid on the potatoes rattled and hissed.

And at that moment Martha, the eldest daughter, arrived to much excitement. She was a maid and had spent the morning cleaning and washing up after her mistress’s Christmas Eve feast, whilst her mistress had urged them all wearily to clean ‘a little more quietly, for heaven’s sake’.

‘Never mind!’ said Mrs Cratchit, kissing her daughter. ‘So long as you are come!’

Her mother told her to get warmed by the fire but the children saw their father coming and told her to hide, which she, good sport that she was, dutifully did.

Bob Cratchit entered, Tiny Tim on his shoulder, the little boy holding a wooden crutch, his leg girded with an iron frame. Bob noted the absence immediately.

‘Why, where’s our Martha?’

‘Not coming,’ said Mrs Cratchit.

Bob’s face fell.

‘Not coming?’ he said. ‘On Christmas Day?’

The sudden decline in Bob’s spirits was too much for Martha to bear and she jumped out from her hiding place, throwing her arms round her father’s neck. Lizzie chuckled at the sight, but Sam shook his head.

‘Look at them,’ he said. ‘What is the point of all this? They are no better off today than they were yesterday, and yet they go on like they’ve come into a fortune.’

The festivities began full force. The feast was prepared. The goose was fetched and hailed with such respect it might have been the Queen herself. Sam smiled at the excitement that such a modest bird produced in the Cratchit household.

Peter mashed the potatoes without mercy whilst Mrs Cratchit made the gravy, and Belinda, the second eldest of the daughters, made the apple sauce. The youngest children noisily set the table and dragged chairs into place, and Bob and Tim occupied the corner of the table together.

Sam listened to Lizzie laughing and wondered why the spirit’s incense had not worked its magic on him. Was he so dead to joy? Had he so totally forgotten what happiness was? He felt a kinship with the invalid Tim.
That is what I must be like inside,
thought Sam.
And yet still he tries to match the others for happiness.

Sam had barely taken his eyes off Bob’s frail son, as he hopped unsteadily about the room, his crutch clunking against the floor as the others either steered clear of him or guided him to safety.

Bob rarely left the boy’s side and Sam noticed that they were almost always in physical contact, as they were then at the table, Bob’s own skinny hand seeming to be full of health and vigour beside the pale and limp, fragile hand of his son.

Everyone saw this favouritism and all knew the sad truth it concealed and none would ever have been jealous of it nor ever remarked upon it.

When Mrs Cratchit began to carve the goose and the full aroma of it was released, the younger Cratchits beat the handles of their knives on the table (which bore the bruises of earlier such beatings) and even Tiny Tim joined in with a barely audible ‘Hurrah!’

The goose was consumed with a joyful enthusiasm, the eating punctuated by sighs and exhalations. With a great deal of assistance from the generous portions of potatoes, stuffing and apple sauce, it proved to be big enough to feed the whole family.

The pudding was fetched and, though not as large as it might be, was treated with all the ceremony a pudding ten times the size – and with a great deal more fruit – might have been expected to receive.

The dishes were cleared away and the fire built up so that chestnuts might be roasted, and there never could have been a rosier scene as apples and oranges were brought out to excited cries.

But Sam saw only Tiny Tim, whose eyelids were drooping now, exhausted by the activity, nestling into his father’s chest, ear to his father’s heart.

‘Mr Scrooge!’ said Bob Cratchit, standing and raising his glass for a toast, making Tim jump. ‘I give you Mr Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast.’

His enthusiasm was not reciprocated.

‘Founder of the Feast indeed!’ said Mrs Cratchit. ‘I wish I had him here. I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon –’

‘My dear,’ said Bob, ‘the children. It’s Christmas Day.’

Mrs Cratchit made it very clear what she thought of the notion of toasting such ‘an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man’ as Scrooge, and Sam looked up at the spirit.

‘Seems like your magic is wearing off,’ he said. ‘Why Bob wants to toast the miser, I’ll never know, but his family see him for what he is, that’s for sure.’

‘And yet they toast him still,’ said the spirit.

It was true. The family did – for Bob’s sake – toast Scrooge, however reluctantly. Sam shook his head as even Tiny Tim proffered a weak toast to his father’s employer.

‘Look at him,’ said Sam. ‘Poor little so-and-so. What’s he got to toast anyone about?’

‘He does it for love of his father,’ said the spirit.

‘Then his father’s a fool to make him,’ said Sam. ‘And he’s a fool to do it.’

The Ghost of Christmas Present made no reply. And in his heart Sam knew he did not believe Bob Cratchit to be a fool at all, but a good man who deserved better. He wished they could do more than sprinkle fairy dust on their lives. What good was that to Tiny Tim?

‘Spirit,’ said Sam after a pause, trying to sound nonchalant, ‘will that boy live?’

‘Sam,’ said Lizzie, ‘don’t . . .’