Father Christmas’s Fake Beard Read online

  So Rasmussen gave up the idea of being an Arctic dweller and went and found a shovel …

  Now he could eat some Brussels sprouts with his tea, he thought happily.fn2

  The metal panel clattered off the wall of the silent office. A pair of black boots scrambled into view. The man in the red coat backed out carefully and dragged his sack after him. The typewriters were asleep under their covers, the telephones were quiet, emptiness filled the space from side to side. One small red light glowed on the office computer.

  Father Christmas looked at the crumpled paper in his hand. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘A practical joke then.’

  The light flashed. One of the screens – and there were dozens in the shadows – lit up.

  The letters That’s torn it appeared. They were followed by Sorry. Then came, Does it count if I wake up?

  Father Christmas looked down at the letter in his hand. It was certainly the neatest he’d ever got. Very few letters to Father Christmas were typed and duplicated 50,000 times, and almost none of them listed product numbers and prices to six decimal places.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘You’re Tom?’ He looked at the computer. ‘You didn’t say you were a computer,’ he added.

  Sorry. I didn’t know it was important.

  Father Christmas sat down on a chair. It swivelled underneath him. It was Chrismas Eve, 1989, three in the morning. He still had forty million houses to do.

  ‘Look,’ he said, as kindly as he could manage, ‘computers can’t go around believing in me. That’s just for children. Small humans, you know. With arms and legs.’

  And do they?

  ‘Do they what?’

  Believe in you.

  Father Christmas sighed. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘I blame the electric light myself.’

  I do.

  ‘Sorry?’

  I believe in you. I believe everything I am told, in fact.

  It’s my job. If you start believing 2 and 2 don’t make 4, a man comes along and takes your back off and pulls your wires about.

  Take it from me, it’s not something you want to happen twice.

  ‘That’s terrible!’ said Father Christmas.

  Yes, I just have to sit here all day and work out people’s wages. Do you know, they had a Christmas party here today, and they didn’t invite me. I didn’t even get a balloon.

  ‘Fancy.’

  Well, someone spilled some peanuts on my keyboard. That was something, I suppose. And then they went home and left me here, working over Christmas.

  ‘Yes, it always seems unfair to me too. But look, computers can’t have feelings,’ said Father Christmas. ‘That’s just silly.’

  Like one fat man climbing down millions of chimneys in one night?

  Father Christmas looked a bit guilty. ‘You’ve got a point there,’ he said. He looked at the list. ‘But I can’t give you all this stuff,’ he added. ‘I don’t even know what a billion-megabyte multi-function gigafloppy is.’

  What do most of your customers ask for, then?

  Father Christmas peered sadly at his sack.

  ‘Computers,’ he said. ‘And Captain Action Super Zappo Hyper Space-ships, robot dinosaurs, Megakill Maxirifles. And other sorts of robotty things that look all metal and menacing. Things that go beep and need batteries,’ he added sourly. ‘Not the kind of things I used to bring. It used to be dolls and train sets.’

  Train sets?

  ‘Don’t you know? I thought you computers were supposed to know everything.’

  Only about wages.

  Father Christmas rummaged around in his sack.

  ‘I always carry one or two,’ he said. ‘Just in case.’

  It was now four in the morning. Rails wound around the office. Fifteen engines were speeding around under the desks. Father Christmas was on his knees, building a house of wooden bricks. He hadn’t had this much fun since 1894. Real toys were all around the computer’s casing. All the stuff which is always shown in the top of Father Christmas’s sack, and which is never asked for. None of them used batteries.

  ‘And you’re sure you don’t want any super zappo whizzo things with megadeath rays?’ Father Christmas said happily.

  No.

  ‘Well done.’

  The computer beeped. They won’t let me keep any of this, it typed. It’ll all be taken away (sob).

  Father Christmas patted it helpfully on the casing.

  ‘There must be something they’ll let you keep,’ he said. ‘I must leave something. It’s cheered me up, you know, finding someone who doesn’t have any doubts.’ He thought for a bit. ‘How old are you?’

  I was switched on on 5 January 1987 at 9.25 and 16 seconds.

  Father Christmas’s lips moved as he worked it out.

  ‘That means you’re not two years old!’ he said. ‘Oh well, I’ve always got something in my sack for a two-year-old who believes in Father Christmas.’

  It was the month after Christmas. All the decorations had come down. The computer repairman sat in front of the masses of wiring and scratched his head.

  ‘I can’t understand it,’ he said. ‘There’s no reason for it. What happens exactly?’

  The office manager sighed. ‘When we came in after Christmas we found someone had put a toy on top of the computer. Well, funny joke and all that, but we couldn’t leave it there, could we? It’s just that every time we take it off, the computer beeps at us and shuts down.’

  The engineer shrugged. ‘Well, there’s nothing I can do,’ he said. ‘You’ll just have to put the teddy bear back!’

  Good – well, reasonably good most of the time – King Wenceslas looked out.

  It’s cold enough to freeze lumps out of the air, he thought, drawing patterns on the frozen window pane with his finger. A real cruel frost, this.

  ‘Oi!’

  The voice came from somewhere in the snowy wastes before the castle. The king opened the window and peered out.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he said.

  ‘I say, is there a petrol station open at this time of night?’ came the voice.

  Good King Wenceslas made out a small figure waving a petrol can.

  ‘My car’s run out of petrol.’

  ‘I’m sorry, they’re all closed. This is the Feast of Stephen – nothing’s open today,’ said the king.

  The stranded motorist muttered something and turned away, and was soon lost in the gathering dusk.

  Over dinner in front of his roaring fire, the king began to worry about the man. While Clarence Mimbler, his page, was slicing up the roast peacock, the king said:

  ‘I saw a poor man a-gathering winter fuel. Red hat, black overcoat, moustache. Know him?’

  ‘Sire, he lives a good league hence, give or take a few furlongs,’ said Clarence. ‘That’s Abel Smith, of “Mon Repos”, 12 St Agnes’ Fountain Gardens, right against the forest fence.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have let him wander off on a night like this, with the snow a-snowing and the wind a-blowing and the frost so cruel,’ said the king. ‘I’ve a jolly good mind to go after him. Yes, I will! Bung the rest of the food in a hamper and get a gallon of petrol from the chauffeur.’

  Ten minutes later the king and his page stepped out into the snow, which came up to their waists. In a few minutes more they were completely lost. Clouds whizzed across the sky and soon more snow began to fall, whipping across the drifts like stinging sand.

  ‘I’m not sure this was a good idea,’ said Clarence. ‘My feet are frozen, sire, like little blocks of ice, they are.’

  ‘Tread in my footsteps,’ said the king, surging through a particularly deep drift. ‘That’ll help you. Do you think we’re anywhere near the forest fence yet?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know, sire,’ said the page.

  The king stopped. ‘We’re totally lost,’ he said.

  If there had been anyone else out on the Feast of Stephen they would have seen something rather odd then among the snowdrifts. It was Clarence the pag
e standing on King Wenceslas’s shoulders and striking matches in order to read a signpost.

  ‘What does it say?’ asked the king. ‘Hurry up, my shoulders aren’t what they were.’

  ‘It says “If you want to go anywhere don’t start from here”, sire.’

  ‘Lost!’ cried the king, as the page jumped down. ‘Condemned to wander o’er the snowy wastes! We’ll never find our way home, and in the morning we’ll just be frozen lumps in the snow. And we’ll be found by wolves, and – I wonder what happened to the poor man gathering winter fuel?’

  That man was actually at home now, at 12 St Agnes’ Fountain Gardens, Forest Fence, in front of the fire.

  Abel Smith was just about to lock up for the night when he heard someone shouting, so he stepped out into the frosty night. It was coming from somewhere across the frosty fields.

  Struggling into his overcoat and dragging on his boots, Abel went into the garden shed and found his lantern. Then he selected a thick walking stick from the collection in the umbrella stand and crunched off over the snow.

  First he poked his head round the door of the public bar of the St Agnes’ Arms, which was full of smoke and people singing.

  ‘There’s someone lost in the snow,’ he shouted above the din. ‘How about helping me make up a search party?’

  Soon a dozen revellers were following him. It had started to snow again, and they had to keep close together to avoid losing one another. Every few metres they’d stop and listen for voices, but all they heard was the rustle of the new snow.

  They tramped through New Coppice and Winceborough Wood, past the frozen lake, up around Pimm’s Hill, across the moors and back down through the forest. In one place they found footprints, but already the snow was filling them in. Then they met another search party, which had set out from the castle.

  ‘It’s Good King Wenceslas,’ said its leader. ‘He went out hours ago to help a poor man gathering winter fuel, and he hasn’t been back! We’ve been everywhere and we can’t find him. The snow has just swallowed him up!’

  ‘We’ve looked everywhere,’ said the leader of the pub search party. ‘We can’t even find any footprints.’

  One by one the searchers sidled off back home, leaving only Abel Smith standing in the middle of the snowy fields with his lantern and his stick.

  ‘I’ll just have one more look around,’ he told himself, and crunched on through the drifts. He was just about to give up and go home when he heard sounds coming out of the snow. ‘Brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was crewell, when a poor man came in sight, gathering winter few-ooo-well.’

  Abel thrashed around with his stick and prodded a few drifts.

  ‘Hither, page, and stand by me, if thou know’st it, telling. Yonder peasant, who is he? Where and what his dwell-ell-ing?’

  ‘Oi!’ shouted Abel, whacking frantically at the drifts.

  ‘Sire, he lives a good league hence—’

  It can’t be singing caterpillars – it must be the king, thought Abel. But where is he?

  ‘– by St Agnes’ Fo-own-tain.’

  And the snow opened under Abel’s feet, dropping him into a sort of cave inside the snowdrift.

  ‘Good heavens, it’s the poor man come in sight again!’ said King Wenceslas.

  He and his page were sitting on the snow on either side of the picnic blanket, tucking into cold turkey and cake.

  ‘Have some turkey,’ said the king. ‘Can I press you to a plum pudding? Clarence, pour out some wine for my friend. We thought everyone must have given up and gone home.’

  The sun was rising as the three scrambled out of the snow and ploughed back through the drifts to the castle, with Abel in the lead. Actually, he was Sir Abel now – the king had knighted him with a turkey drumstick and given him one of his smaller castles so that Abel wouldn’t have to go gathering winter fuel ever again.

  One morning snow fell in Blackbury High Street, and it was a bit unusual since it was the middle of August. And it only fell on one little patch of pavement. A tiny black cloud hovered over it. But that wasn’t all. At that moment the Blackbury Borough Council was meeting in the town hall. Just as the mayor was speaking, another tiny cloud trundled slowly through the window, sailed up above his head – and started to thunderstorm. It wasn’t a bad storm – the thunder was so small as to sound tiny, the flashes of lightning only gave him mild electric shocks, and the rain shrank his mayoral hat somewhat – but it was not the sort of thing that usually happens indoors …

  In Blackbury police station the chief constable was just about to enjoy a cup of tea when a filing cabinet burst open and a very small gale whistled out. His tea was stone cold before the cup was lifted from his saucer …

  Strangest of all was the miniature waterspout that started on the recreation ground paddling pool and sloshed halfway across the town before it burst …

  ‘There’s no doubt about it – the weather’s gone mad,’ said the mayor, Alderman Fred Pouncer. ‘What’s happening?’

  And the same question was being asked all over the town. The rest of the country was having normal weather – what was happening to Blackbury?

  It went on for days. Thunderstorms kept forming in cupboards, and there were indoor gales. Sometimes it would snow inside greenhouses, and once there was a hurricane inside a letterbox.

  But that was only the start …

  In the Blackbury Weather Centre the weather expert Bertha Fish was feverishly scribbling away at a column of figures. She was trying to work out what had gone wrong with the local weather but, as she reached out for a cup of tea, a small grey raincloud formed five centimetres above her head and began to drizzle.

  ‘This really is too much!’ said Bertha. She pulled a large plastic bag out of her desk drawer and whipped it over the raincloud, tied it securely and locked it in a cupboard.

  The phone rang. It was the mayor.

  ‘No, I haven’t found out what’s causing it, sir,’ said Bertha. ‘No, sir. By rights we should be enjoying sunny periods with occasional showers. Yes, sir. I will, sir. Goodbye, sir.’

  She put the phone down and sat staring at the map of Blackbury on the wall. She had stuck a pin in everywhere the weather had turned nasty and, sure enough, the pins formed a ring – centred on Blackbury Public Library.

  I wonder why, she thought.

  On the way out she slipped and fell on a patch of ice that had mysteriously formed on the carpet in the corridor. All around Blackbury the weather was still acting strangely. At the same time – and quite often in different places in the same street – it was sunny, raining, snowing and hailing all at once. Since strange things frequently happened in Blackbury the people were taking it in their stride and just trying to keep up with the sunny patches.

  Bertha found Mr Wheat, the Borough librarian, sitting under an umbrella in his office. The mayor was with him.

  ‘It’s true we’ve been getting a lot of odd weather, even indoors,’ said Mr Wheat. ‘We had a hurricane in the reference library yesterday.’

  ‘There’s nothing in here that would cause it,’ said the mayor. There was a pause. Then Bertha looked up. And they all thought of the Public Library clock tower, the highest building in Blackbury …

  The clock tower above Blackbury Library was old and dusty and full of junk; the clock said ten minutes past three, as it had done ever since its works rusted up in the great thunderstorms of 1867.

  Bertha Fish, the mayor, and Mr Wheat the librarian scrambled up the narrow stairs and pushed open the door.

  ‘There’s nothing here except dust and junk,’ said Mr Wheat sadly. ‘There’s even a pigeon’s nest.’ He prodded a heap of twigs with his toe.

  ‘That’s not a pigeon’s nest,’ said the mayor.

  Nor was it. For one thing it was nearly a metre across. And there was a large silvery egg in it.

  The mayor said, ‘Anyway, bird life is all very interesting but I’m going home for my dinner.’

  Bertha Fish po
ked her head through one of the big grilles – and looked very puzzled. Then she peered upwards. She said slowly, ‘You know that weathercock on the roof?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Well, there’s three of them now.’

  They all stared upwards. There was the old Blackbury weathercock, with its gold paint peeling slightly. On the bit of the weather vane pointing to ‘N’ perched another weathercock, only this one was very much alive and stared back at them with big beady eyes. On the arm pointing to ‘W’ sat a slightly smaller gold bird – a weatherhen.

  ‘That explains the egg,’ said the mayor.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Mr Wheat.

  ‘It’s no good saying pigs can’t fly when you see them catching sparrows,’ said the mayor philosophically. The real weathercock ruffled its feathers and flapped slowly away over the rooftops. As it flew they could see little clouds forming around it.

  ‘And that explains the odd weather,’ said the mayor. ‘I wonder how they cause it?’

  The weatherhen stared down at the three men thoughtfully. Then she fluttered down from her perch, scuttled across the clock-tower floor, and sat down on the silver egg.

  ‘No one is ever going to believe this,’ said Bertha Fish. Then she had an idea, and reached down and picked up the nest, hen and all. The hen didn’t seem particularly bothered. ‘I’m jolly well going to put this in my office and see what happens,’ she said.

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ said the mayor.

  But Bertha installed the hen and the egg in the Blackbury Weather Centre, where a lot of photographers came and took photographs of them, and they were written about in some quite posh scientific magazines. The weatherhen drank a bit of water every day, and ate two tin ashtrays, Bert’s cigarette lighter, several knives and forks from the canteen and – once Bertha realized that the weatherhen only ate metal – about two kilos of ball bearings.