A Christmas Carol
By Cuger Brant
Published by Smashwords
Copyright © 2010 Cuger Brant
eEdition Published by Smashwords ISBN; 978-1-4523-8188-6
The right of Cuger Brant to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (UK).
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Also by Cuger Brant
End Game
Something Wicked This Way Comes
RDD
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Dedication:
To the gone, but not forgotten, lest it returns.
To Sam, a loyal, valued, very dear four legged friend and companion, through my hard times.
PREFACE…
To me, the original story by Charles Dickens ‘A Christmas Carol’ encapsulates a ghost story, a sci-fi story and a moral. It ‘hits a chord’ so to speak, with me, and if you have a heart, most likely with you too. With very great respect and admiration to Mr Dickens, I had this inner need to ‘update’ it, as to let you ‘modern’ day poor souls, digest the moral and spirituality of the prose.
I am trying, with my interpretation of this seasonal little story, to prick your conscience. With a little trickery of concepts, I want to disturb you somewhat and make you think.
If it haunts you, so be it! My spiritual endeavour will then be done.
I hope it should put you out of humour with the season for a moment. You will be all the better for it! And, if you digest this little story with a conscience, maybe others will benefit from your kindness.
You may even benefit from it yourself...!!
A Christmas Carol
It was the day before Christmas as the thoroughly disgruntled man pushed through the busy throng of people. He felt thoroughly ‘miffed’ (and that is being gentle on the emotion he felt). He hated them, despised them, they filled him with contempt. The thought, ‘pathetic idiots’, ran through his mind.
He decided to buy a coffee and escape this melee of humankind jostling and pushing around him. He sat at a table outside a café in Ely Court. No! It was not a court of law. It was the name of an outside thoroughfare of the local shopping mall. He mulled over the subject of Christmas and the crowds of fools, as he perceived them: the mindless sheep who rushed around the shopping centre. “The ‘Shopping Mall’ that self-gratifying, preserver and provider of all pointless artifacts, which the local populace of the town of ‘Royal Tunbridge Wells’ frequented, in order to touch, pick and buy.” He thought, running the whole situation through his mind.
“They did this in order to replenish their egos, their self- importance, their self-opinionated lust, to satisfy their need to be just how their egotistic minds perceive them to be.” He thought. He then grunted with contempt, while smoking a cigarette in between sips of his coffee, reflecting on how to spend his day.
Like most days, he was just killing time, serving no purpose in the great scheme of things, just bored and fed up with his life. He had bought some items, which he really did not need, but in purchasing them it made him feel uplifted for a few minutes. His hate, his contempt for his fellow man gave him purpose, meaning, it raised him above them. If truth was put to him, he was what he despised in others. In fact, he only really hated himself.
He sat there observing passers-by, judging their ‘weaknesses’ according to his standards and perceptions of the human race. He often did this; he did this all the time. It made him feel above them. What he did not realise was, nearly everyone else was doing the same, when they glanced at him.
Was it a modern dilemma, or did people partake in this habit throughout time? Was in their psyche, their make up or a communication thing until they got to know each other, a sort of in built defense mechanism? Or was it an inner fear a valuation of self worth to hide the revelation that in the end, we are all, really the same?
A woman sat down beside him, she appeared rather untidy, unkempt, sad and lonely-looking he thought as he scrutinised her. The woman coughed and quickly glanced at him despondently, as if looking for something from him. It made him shiver. He looked at her with an air of utter indifference. Sensing he was observing her, she then proceeded to fumble nervously with the contents of her handbag, as if trying to look as though she were of some importance.
The man glanced at her with a somewhat disapproving look; it was his usual well-practiced contemptuous glance. Then, while studying her, a sort of déjà vu feeling came over him; a vague thought, ‘Do I know you from somewhere?’ flashed through his mind.
He looked away and, getting ready to move from this rather ‘uncomfortable’ spectacle sitting beside him, he finished his drink, then lent down and put his cigarette on the ground and stubbed it out with his foot.
That’s when it happened...
He raised his head and suddenly realised he wasn’t sitting on a bench anymore, but on an upturned old wooden box which lent against a dirty, sooty, red-bricked, wall. He turned and looked at the girl sitting besides him and said reflectively, pensively, “I just had the strangest dream, Rebecca.”
Rebecca sat there beside him. She was dressed or, rather, was ‘attired’, in her tatty clothes; rags would probably be a better description. She had an old woolen shawl covering her thin shoulders with her thick, greasy, unwashed hair straggling over it. Her dress was a well-used, unwashed sort of smock which was shredded around the sleeves and the bottom. She put her small thin hand, which was covered in burn marks, caringly on his arm and said, “I saw you doze off, Luke, I just listened to you breathing. What did you dream?” Luke replied thoughtfully, “I was sitting on a bench, Rebecca, looking at you, but not you. I mean it was you but you were different, but it was definitely you though. I knew it was. I felt it was somehow. You were staring at me, trying to say something to me. But I did not want to listen.
All around me were shops with big glass windows, no bricks, just all glass and I could see right through them to things inside for sale. There were.. flowers!”
Luke reflected as the memory of his dream faded fast.
“Yes, flowers, in pots, in winter! They were, hanging from the roofs of the shops and, I had shoes, Rebecca! I had shoes on!”
“Oh, Luke, I know you did.” She replied as she put her little head against his shoulder and hugged him. I dreamt it as well.”
Luke looked at her. “No, Rebecca, you cannot possibly dream my dreams,” he said disconcertedly.
“Sometimes I can, Luke,” she replied whimsically.
Quickly changing the subject she said hastily, “Come on Luke we have to go! I’ve heard there is an entertainment being put on down the hill at the Parade in the bottom of town in honour of Christmas and I do so love carols; perhaps we could beg some farthings.”
Luke looked at her, studied her for a thoughtful moment and said, “Funny little thing you are, Rebecca, why do you care so much about me?”
Rebecca stopped suddenly and looked deeply into his eyes, hesitated, then said softly, but determinedly “You’re my soul-mate, Luke,” she smiling, and looked at him with what seemed to Luke like, a sort of inner knowingness.
She then beckoned him to follow her out of the dark sooty alley, into the early morning sunlight which was attempting to break through the cold smog, which emanated from the local gasworks coke ovens and hung in the air above them.
He had asked the question before as to what a soul-mate was. Rebecca always replied, “A true friend, Luke, but not just for this life, but for all our lives.”
This remark had puzzled Luke, but he took it no further, he just put it down to her silliness, her girlishness. After all, girls were more emotional than boys, he thought. They often said silly things.
As Luke stood up, the cold December frost which rose from the cobblestones of the alley chilled his bare feet to the bone. But after a while the aching went away. He ignored it, just like Rebecca did. In fact, she had taught him how not to mind the cold. As a matter of fact she had taught him a lot of things since he first met her.
No! He had forgotten; it was the other way around. She had met him, saved his life in point of fact. She had humbly nursed him back to health in an old shed just off Gas Lane. He had been half asleep, part sitting part leaning against the outside wall of the coal furnace at the time, shivering and coughing. He had been hungry, damp and ill with nowhere to go. He had been trying to gain some warmth from the fire that burned on the other side of the wall. She had even known his name.
It was two years ago when he had first heard her gentle voice speaking to him.
“Luke, Luke, you’re not well, are you? Come with me, Luke, I will look after you.” Luke had duly followed her.
He had no option really. His dispirited inner self was giving up, accepting its fate. He was, at the time, evaluating his life, his misery, his suffering, against the worth, the benefits, even the very point of going on.
It was the loneliness mostly, the utter loneliness that he felt and the complete estrangement from all the to-ing and fro-ing that was around him. Everyone deemed to be going somewhere doing something, smiling and exchanging greetings as they passed. It seemed to him that the whole world had a purpose, except him. He felt there was no point to him, no hope of something better, just survival.
Rebecca’s voice warmed his spirit. Someone was actually talking to him without cursing him, scolding him, despising him or hitting him, as everyone normally did when he asked for discarded scraps, or hung about a shop looking at the food inside, or upon happenstance gaining a farthing for carrying some baggage and getting cursed to satisfy their importance for not moving fast enough.
Her little thin arms surrounded his shoulders as if to pick him up, even though she couldn’t possibly have done, given the size of her little body.
Accepting this faint candlelight of love, this caring gesture, this pity - no, not pity, for under the circumstances, they both were in need of that, from who ever and whatever its feeling gave, Luke responded. He drew himself up using what strength he had, he wanted to, he willed himself to.
With her actions of care, love and interest, she was giving him something. Although unseen, he felt it rise from within him, a sense of, ‘I am a person, I am of some worth’. It spread through his body, his heart. It made him glad. It made him warm in his very soul, a feeling which he had never experienced in his life.
He leant on her frail little body all the way to her accommodation, her rickety shed. It was hidden behind a broken, soot-encrusted, red brick wall and was perched precariously between two old coal warehouses which you could hardly walk through without stepping sideways.
Luke followed her into her ‘little house’ and lay on some old Hessian sacks, where she covered him with some discarded ragged overcoats which she had collected on her travels and used as blankets.
Her little house was in fact no more than a shed, perched aside the wall of the gasworks. The heat from the boilers emanated through the walls into her little abode.
She nursed him and cared for him for three long winter months, warming him with her half starved little body. She lay with him through those cold nights when he was shivering, with cold sweat running from his emaciated feverish body. She gave him love, she gave him care. She brought him food, washed his face, boiled water in a cast-iron pan on a fire which she made from the coal she had purloined from the gasworks. She cut pieces of vegetables and meat she had scavenged from the market and washed very carefully in one of the drinking fountains which trickled into a horse trough. She inserted these paltry morsels into the boiling water. She fed him like this over those grim cold dark months and eventually built his health up.
During this time he talked about his life, his experiences, both good and bad. He used to live down Stanley Road, by the old quarry. This, as far as he could remember, was where his father unloaded the trains which arrived at the goods yard. His father was a big man, the strongest in the yard, people said. His mother did odd jobs as well as looking after him and his brothers and sisters. The cholera and the pox took most of them; finally, even his mother succumbed. Hereafter, his eldest sister looked after them whilst his father worked.
One day his father came home and told them he had been sacked for hitting the foreman. He explained he had done this in order to stop a man being beaten for not pulling his weight. He knew the man was poorly, so did everyone else in the yard, even the foreman. The man had collapsed and two hours later had died.
His father had then obtained employment at the town gasworks, but after an outbreak of consumption at the works, his father became ill. He started to get more and more listless, his coughing worsened and he became weaker by the day. Eventually he looked like a pale shadow of his former self. Consumption often did this to a man, and after a period of being bedridden, he suddenly died. Consequently, Luke, his two remaining brothers and one sister were put in the new workhouse. Anything the children possessed had been sold to recover debts.
The workhouse had been built at the end of Blackhurst Lane, a road which led from the town to an old working quarry in the country. This is where one of his brothers was deemed old enough to be set at stone-breaking, the other, together with Luke, was set at oakum-picking. This involved teasing out the fibers from pieces old hemp ropes in order to sell the product for re-use. His sister was given ‘gainful employment’ in the laundry house, where she grafted day and night. One night when the gate keeper was inebriated, Luke took his opportunity and had run away after deciding he’d had enough. He had spent his time scavenging and begging in the town to survive.
He had asked Rebecca about her life. She never told him though, just gently laughed and said, “Was just here, Luke; I always have been; always will be, there is something I have to do.”
“Another puzzle,” Luke thought, “More silliness.” He didn’t mind though, he was just glad she was with him, it made him happy.
Rebecca had taught Luke to see, not with the eyes, but with the mind. She taught him to judge people: the good ones, the bad ones and the evil ones. “Life is a journey, Luke,” she had once explained. “A journey filled with experiences, lessons really, if you have the mind to know.”
“You need a teacher for lessons though,” Luke had replied, “Are you my teacher, Rebecca?”
“No, Luke, I’m not your teacher. I told you before; I am your soul-mate.”
“There you go again, Rebecca,” Luke said, “talking silly again.” He then asked, “So who is the teacher?”
“The best teacher of all Luke,” Rebecca said. “Humility.”
“Isn’t that just being poor and weak?” Luke asked, confused.
“No, not at all, Luke,” she said and, looking deep into his eyes, explained his teacher, to him.
“Humility, Luke, will teach you perception of things, inner courage and grace. Humility will give you inner peace and confidence. It will teach you a need to, not need of, and a riddance of gratification. It will fill your inner spirit with timeless knowledge and an utter awareness of truth.”
“You are strange sometimes, Rebecca. You speak so, so sort of, religiously.” Luke said, somewhat bemused.
Rebecca laughed her gentle laugh, which he loved, made him happy, and then said, “Perhaps, Luke, but you will learn, you are my soul-mate.”
He did indeed learn, even that very day while on the Parade listening to carols Luke learnt. Rebecca showed him the posturing fool with his perfected sneer of self-importance; the drunkard, numbing his guilt; the swaggering loudmouth who was really a coward. She showed him the self-righteous person who did more harm to the spirit that all the self- doubt in the world could ever do.
On their many wanderings she pointed out ‘things’ to him.
“See that man there, Luke. Watch how he walks, study him. What do you make of such a man?”
Luke studied the man meandering by and said, “He is swaying slightly as he struts in his finery; his coat tails are moving from side to side. He looks glad of himself to me. His arms are hanging out from his body like a monkey. He has an air of bragging about him.” “What about that man, Luke?” Rebecca said gesturing to another. “Why is he different?”
Luke observed the passer by, scrutinised him and said, “Well, he is steady on his feet, walks upright. Even though his clothes are common and worn he has a bearing about his person, a sort of respect.”
“Which one would you trust to ask a farthing of without getting cursed at or perhaps hit, Luke?” Rebecca asked.
Luke replied thoughtfully, “Definitely not the monkey fellow. I’d ask the other man.”
“There, Luke, see! You are looking at their souls, even though one has lots of money but little bearing, you would rather ask the man who has little money but lots of bearing. Why is that Luke?” She questioned.
“Oh! Rebecca, I know you are teaching me somehow, even though I don’t read or write. Right clever you are.”
“Not me, Luke, it’s your teacher inside you, showing you something,” she said, continuing, “Our soul is a seed, Luke. How we feed it is how it grows, if it grows at all. If not, it must be replanted and grown again. Or it will never bear fruit.”
This is what little Rebecca did all the time she knew Luke.
She showed him where the road called Envy led, winding through the dark woods of hate, and explained how the traveler who walked it was transformed into a blind, wretched worm unable to see. This is how she imparted her awareness to Luke, by explaining things in stories.
As they walked the alleys of the poor part of the town, through the filthy stench of rotting garbage and soiling thrown from the run down habitations, she showed him where sorrow, strife and woe were festering and explained why. She explained to Luke the evil of ignorance, pitiless contempt and selfish pride of man.
They shared happy times, too. One of Rebecca’s favourite outings in the summer was to a little village in the country called Groombridge.
They had befriended old Mrs Martin who lived at Stone Mill Cottage, just by the river Grom. They did this by bringing her treats from town, a lace hankie, found and washed by Rebecca, and some scented confectionery bartered for with other goods in their possession. Mrs Martin reciprocated by giving them accommodation in her outhouse and feeding them during their stay. In the evenings they told her of the goings on in town and news of any importance.
On sunny lazy afternoons Rebecca and Luke sat by the roadside halfway up the hill towards the village of Langton. They positioned themselves by the horse trough, watching folk trundle up and down the hill with their pack horses, horse and carts, even folk pulling barrows.
They chatted with the passers by who brought news from other parts and, in turn, Luke and Rebecca gave news from the Tunbridge Wells and news from London which they had heard talked of. ‘Politicks’ they said it was. Most talked of was the new railway. “Put an end to turnpike at Crockers hatch, most likely the one along the pack horse track at Adams well, most agreed with satisfaction.
On hot summer days they walked along the banks of the river Grom, by the brickworks, and where the river had made a swirl-pool further on as it twisted around the contours of the landscape, they bathed. This was their summer outing to the country.
Late summer they ‘scrumped’ apples, pears and picked blackberries. If fact they picked any manner of wild fruits and berries and any other thing they could find, which grew in the wood, hedgerows and around the local farms surrounding the town, and sold these in the markets to stall holders or in the streets to idle inquisitors out for amusement.
At times Rebecca talked to Luke of olden times. ‘History,’ she had said it was.
She told of strange places and goings on. She told tales of wars, famines, plagues and disasters. She explained to Luke how all these had woven, moulded and tested man. She told him that it was not pride, money or greed that brought man through all those things, it was humility.
Luke never asked her how she knew as much, he just assumed all had been passed down to her from older folk and older folk before that. He always thought she was clever. No, not clever, wise more like.
One day in December, just before Christmas in very fact, Luke and Rebecca were sitting in their ‘abode’, their rickety little wooden shed, on their Hessian sacks, cuddling together, with their ruddy cheeks aglow in front of the warmth of their little coal fire built against the sooty brick wall of the town’s gas works. They felt that glow inside, of warmth, not from the fire, but from inside each other’s togetherness, each other’s happiness.
They had saved up enough food and confectionery to celebrate what, indeed, everyone celebrated: Christmas. It was as they looked at their little meager store of goodies, calculating the treasures they had hoarded, things they had managed to lay claim to that they, quite suddenly… died.
An explosion aside them, blew out the side of one of the coke furnace walls and blew them, together with their ‘little house’ into oblivion.
That’s when it happened…
Luke came around in a field hospital just behind the front line in Belgium. The pain that racked his body was almost unbearable.
As he cried out in agony, morphine was administered in his leg. Being shell-shocked also severely injured in the abdomen and losing a lot of blood, he lost consciousness again.
The field surgeon looked at him coldly calculating something in his mind. There were three priorities for the surgeon: those who needed treatment urgently; those who could be left until later; and those who, even if treated, would die anyway. It was not the callousness of the surgeon personally that came to this conclusion, it was the strict practice of battlefield triage.