Short story: Twinkling

Mother Christmas, goblins and a lopsided tree? This Christmas display will be nothing if not unique...

Christmas? I hate it.’ Rosie heard this refrain frequently as the countdown got underway.

There were the proper Christmas-haters – the ‘Bah, humbug!’ brigade – and then there were the nostalgic types she’d overhear on the bus, the ones who reckoned Christmas hadn’t been the same since the days of Perry Como and satsumas in stockings.

Rosie’s dominant festive memory was of hearing her dad swear as he bumped his head on the loft ladder, getting ‘Santa’s’ presents down from the loft at 3am, while she was meant to be fast asleep.

It made her chuckle sadly to recall it. You had to laugh, didn’t you? If only her mum and dad were still here…

Enough of that! Rosie was determined to count her blessings. This year, she’d be spending Christmas with her cousin Julie and her husband and kids. She and Julie were more like sisters, really, and when she’d said tentatively,

‘As long as I won’t be in the way,’ Julie had snorted with a briskness she recognised as very like her own.

So now, with her best foot forward, Rosie revolved into Hatcher’s, the department store in town, set on making important seasonal purchases. First off, a fake, no-fuss tree. Hatcher’s had plenty alongside the store’s display tree, which was being manhandled into position on the ground floor.

They had gold ones, upside-down ones, spindly things sprayed with black glitter… And then she saw a poster behind a till.

Auditions for Mother Christmas today, 3pm. Competitive hourly rate.

‘Mother Christmas?’ she asked a passing assistant.

‘Don’t ask,’ said the assistant, shaking her elf hat. ‘It’s an alternative thing. Bonkers, if you ask me.’

Rosie, however, was intrigued. She still had all her pressies to buy, so any financial injection would be a big help.

She followed the signs through a set of swing doors, down a corridor and into a waiting room. She saw at once that she had quite a lot of competition. There were thin, tall and authentically rotund Mother Christmases, all pacing the room and ‘ho-ho-ing’ like mad. Could she compete?

A harassed-looking bloke came along, carrying a clipboard. ‘Height?’ he asked her peremptorily. ‘Five-eight in my tights.’ ‘Weight?’

‘Just shy of 10 stone.’

‘Age?’

‘Old enough to know better.’ He smiled through his fatigue. ‘The grotto is up and running, and you won’t be needed every day – only for humorous guest appearances to pad out Santa’s family tree. It’s an open audition. You may wish to play Mother Christmas

as a jolly woman in an apron, or you may see her as, I don’t know…a modern woman juggling the demands of elf-welfare with running a multinational business at the North Pole.’

‘Right,’ said Rosie, hiding her nerves. ‘I’ll probably just wing it.’

‘Really?’ The bloke looked her up and down. ‘I’ve got it! A goth Mother Christmas! You’re tall, and you’d look the biz in a Morticia Addams gown and fingerless, long gloves. We could have a dungeon next to the grotto…’

He was scribbling frantically on his clipboard.

‘Don’t you think that’ll scare the children?’

‘No, no, very Harry Potterish. And, instead of a sack, you could have a cauldron full of presents. And your helpers could be… What can we have instead of drippy elves?’ He clicked his fingers. ‘I know – goblins. Ha-ha!’

It was a slightly manic laugh, Rosie noticed.

‘But goblins might give some kids nightmares..?’

‘Listen, on the budget I’ve been given, I’m not talking green screen and CGI – just a few students with rubber fangs and a bit of face paint.’

What he was talking was actually something else, Rose refrained from saying.

A walkie-talkie on his hip crackled into life and he looked more harassed than ever. ‘Yes, this is he,’ he confirmed to someone at the other end. Then he frowned. ‘What d’you mean there’s no room? How can-? Well, just cut off the top, then!’

He rolled his eyes, shouted into the walkie-talkie, ‘I’ll be right there, Darren!’, and turned to the assembled Mother Christmases. ‘Due to unforeseen circs, today’s auditions are cancelled.

Please come back tomorrow.’

On her way out, Rosie noticed that a large area on the ground floor had been staked out with red-and-white barriers and Keep back, men

at work! signs, which wasn’t terribly festive. The display tree was now covered in guy ropes, a man in a hard hat clambering up the side of it.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked a small group of rubberneckers at the foot of the escalator.

‘Some idiot ordered a Norwegian spruce that’s too tall to clear the wiring in the rafters. Didn’t check the measurements! Now

She saw at once that she had

quite a lot of competition

they’ve had to close this part of the ground floor, including the grotto, while a tree surgeon tries to lop the top off. They must be losing a fortune!’

It was such a shame, thought Rosie. She hoped no-one got into trouble for making such a mistake.

She did return the following day for the audition. A woman on the information desk told her, ‘Oh no, we’ve ditched the Mother Christmas idea. Well, Head Office ditched it, once they got wind. Sorry you’ve had a wasted journey.’

The Norwegian spruce, she noticed, was bizarrely lopsided after its impromptu trim, leaning against the side of the escalator like a festive tippler. It twinkled very becomingly, though, with frosted silver fairy lights, its trunk moored in a red, earthenware pot.

Beside it, she spotted the harassed bloke, hands in pockets, leaning at a very similar angle. He saw her approaching and said unhappily, ‘Perhaps if everyone leant to one side looking at it, the angle would make sense.’

She joined him under the tree, leant at a similar angle and laughed. ‘Actually, that’s a good idea. And look,’ she said, pointing, ‘People are taking selfies of themselves leaning, like they do at Pisa.’

He sighed. ‘Not my department any more. I was only ever a stand-in. Senior Displays Coordinator left at short notice and I thought it was my big break…’ He stared up at the tree. ‘Big career fail, more like.’

Rosie thought she saw the problem: keen to impress and fill very large shoes, he’d overcompensated for his lack of experience with some rather off-thewall ideas...

‘You weren’t sacked..?’ she asked delicately.

He gave a half-smile. ‘Not yet. Only Santa gets the sack at Christmas, or the publicity looks bad for the store. Going to ask for my old job back, though, in sales. I should have it hand-stitched on to a sampler – Stuart Henshall, know your limitations.’

‘That’s a shame,’ said Rosie. His job was all about creating magic, believing in a vision others could enjoy on the spectator side of the curtain.

‘And we can’t even put a fairy or a star at the top of the tree,’ he sighed, gazing up at the distant branches. ‘The way it leans means little kids might hang over the escalator trying to grab it. Whoever heard of a Christmas tree without its twinkly topper?’

‘Well,’ said Rosie, having a lightbulb moment, ‘You could have a fairy door in the tree trunk instead. A little sparkly door. You knock on it, and it opens to reveal the off-duty fairy, taking it easy at home. A slightly tilted home…’

He looked at her with admiration. ‘A fairy door?

I like it! How did you come up with that?’

She told him she’d read about a wood in Dorset where little fairy doors had been set into some of the tree trunks. She didn’t tell him she’d snorted at the time and thought, ‘Tree desecration!’

‘I’m going to bring it up with my boss,’ he said excitedly. ‘That’s if you don’t mind me pitching your idea?’

‘Not at all. Go for it.’

He was in a much perkier mood now. The world needed people like Stuart Henshall, she’d decided – people who didn’t so much pull the wool as cast a shimmery veil over the everyday, to twinkle and beguile. Everyone needed a bit of that.

Later, he came running after her in the shopping centre, smiling broadly, to update her on her fairy door idea.

His bosses had loved it.

‘And you were right about the leaning thing taking off. The tree’s already got its own Twitter account and the local paper wants to do a piece on it! I still feel a prize plum, of course, but my bosses reckon all publicity is good at this time of year. Anyhoo,’ he took a deep breath. ‘I gave you full credit for the fairy door idea.’

He’d found an alternative gig for her, he added, if she was interested – as a penguin in Santa’s grotto at weekends (rollerskating skills optional!).

She did think of mentioning that penguins were in short supply at the North Pole, then thought better of it. The point was, Christmas was a time for suspending disbelief and just going with all the magical silliness. And the key point, said Stuart, was that he’d remembered how tall and willowy she was – a perfect fit for the costume.

‘Tall and willowy?’

‘Yes, tall, blonde and willowy.’ He blushed. ‘Have you got time to discuss the finer points of penguin impersonation in Hatcher’s caff – or, as it’s currently called, the Jingle All the Way Juice Bar? Not my idea, that.’

As Rosie was about to discover, Stuart added sparkle to everything he saw. He made her feel she could be ‘willowy’ as a penguin, or tall, blonde and interesting as herself.

She’d take a sprinkling of that sparkle, she decided. ‘Twas the season, after all.

And maybe she’d linger – just for a while – on the spectator side of the curtain for a change. It might be worth it, just to see what happened next…

Christmas was a time for just going with all the magical silliness