A Christmas Carol II--Contagion Read online

  They darted from street to street, hiding in alleyways and ducking between doorways, feeling foolish when they saw the occasional ordinary person passing along on their business, women carrying baskets or groups of men laughing and shouting, but moving ever faster as they set eyes on small clusters of slow-moving people who seemed to be suffering the effects of a deadening drug, and scarcely able to make any human movement at all. Each of them wondered whether the superstitions they were contemplating could be true, and felt as though they were foolish grown-ups playing a child’s game of hide-and-seek in a most lamentable manner, until at last they turned a corner and saw the building emblazoned with the name Scrooge and Cratchit. They saw the bright lights shining through the windows, the sturdy door standing wide open and a fast-burning fire visible beyond, so that the entire street was permeated by a generally warm and welcoming air emanating from within.

  Nipping across the street with glances left and right (the way appeared to be clear in each direction) the two travellers found themselves inside a capacious office equipped with modern and recently varnished desks, each appointed with a comfortable-looking leather chair far more expensive than that usually afforded to the ordinary clerk. The desks, too, were decorated with small tokens of personal identification, whether it was a curl of hair caught in an ivory clasp, a cameo portrait of a loved one propped up against the books, or a favoured pewter mug (one of them engraved, Mr Tacker noticed, with the legend ‘Another day in paradise!!!’). Overall it presented a workplace with a singularly relaxed and familiar atmosphere, and sitting above all this on a raised plinth was visible the bald crown of the head clerk and partner, scribbling in his ledger with fastidious industry. This was Mr Cratchit.

  Sad to tell, the change in fortunes which had overcome Ebenezer Scrooge’s company in the years since he had first been haunted, and which had produced in him such a wonderful revolution in his character, had not worked upon Mr Cratchit in the same way. His family, which had been large to begin with, had increased so much in size that he could scarcely recollect how many there were, let alone remember all their names, with the result that love them as he undoubtedly did, he was as liable to garner a moment’s rest in his own house (as he said twenty or thirty times a day, at the top of his voice) as he was to levitate from the floor and begin gibbering in tongues, with holy flames leaping from his nostrils.

  That is to say, he was these days short of temper. Worry lines had sprung from either side of his eyes and mouth, spreading in furrowing deltas to the further regions of his face. He had developed a sarcastic look, and splotches of irritable red skin spread across his bald scalp as though angry devils roamed there, searching for the way in to the brain and thence to the mouth to find expression in one of Cratchit’s intemperate outbursts.

  ‘My dear Mr Cratchit!’ said Mr Scrooge, ‘it is late on Christmas Eve! You must abandon your work, and get home at once to your family!’

  ‘Oh hello, Scrooge,’ said Cratchit, without looking up. ‘Happy Christmas to you.’

  ‘Not at home, sir, in the bosom of your loving family? And less than two hours until the bell of Christmas?’

  ‘No, not at home,’ said Cratchit, quite unmoved, his forefinger tracing the figures down a column on his ledger, and his pen marking the total beneath a line at the bottom of the page. ‘I am dreadfully tempted, of course, to escape home and be driven out of my mind by that pack of rabid animals. And yet for some reason I remain trapped here in perfect peace and seclusion, with this orderly workbook for company, and no respite to look forward to but my flask of brandy and some bread and jam by the fire at the end of the day. It is quite mysterious to me,’ he said, leaning back in his chair and placing his arms behind his head with a sigh of deep relaxation, ‘whether I shall ever escape this infernal prison.’

  Scrooge laughed in the uneasy way that men have when they understand a joke has been made but are not quite sure what it is, and patted Mr Cratchit on the back. ‘My dear fellow, you shouldn’t take everything so seriously. Oh, but I forgot to ask after Tiny Tim. How is the poor lad?’

  Cratchit’s relaxed demeanour vanished, replaced by his customary look of antagonistic ill-humour, and he cast a long slow look at his partner, appraising him from shoes to crown, and took a deep breath as though girding himself for an oft-repeated and difficult speech.

  ‘Mr Scrooge,’ he said mildly, ‘you know Tiny Tim?’

  ‘I do, sir,’ said Scrooge, beaming it might be said with pride.

  ‘You know that he stood a full six feet four in his stockings, by his thirteenth birthday – that his name is now as sarcastic as that of Little John in the tale of Robin Hood?’

  ‘I recall that to be true,’ conceded Scrooge.

  ‘And that he is almost as wide as he is tall, all of it muscle, and all of that owing to your repeated generosity in feeding him, and giving him money and gifts over the years?’

  ‘It gives me no little pride to admit it,’ offered the older man.

  ‘You know that thanks to this he became arrogant and spoiled, that he has run up a whole host of fines, thanks to his efforts to help produce a new race of Cratchits with milkmaids, parlour girls and female servants across the length and breadth of London?’

  ‘I have had cause to regret,’ said Scrooge, scratching his nose, ‘that he has this one flaw—’

  ‘You know that he currently resides in the Fleet Prison, for non-payment of debts accrued in a variety of Cheapside gambling dens? And that, as he is still a minor, the debts are mine also? That he is a ruffian? A villain? A vile rogue of your creation?

  A bane upon my very life? And that, may God forgive me, I truly believe the human race would have been the better had his life ebbed from him that Christmas Eve long ago, and left us the memory of a pure and beautiful spirit?’

  Scrooge had now become positively uncomfortable, and his ever-present smile had become very wan, as his eyes travelled around the room and searched for a topic that might allow him to become his genial self again without provoking another angry tirade.

  For his part, Cratchit was for the moment a spent force, and shrinking back from his upright rageful pose back into his usual hunched-over attitude, he regarded the old man’s refusal to hear the truth about Tiny Tim with a weary defeatism, and knew this was a conversation they would have again, and then again, throughout the rest of their acquaintance. Looking away in disgust, he noticed for the first time that they had a guest, and became rather self-conscious about his recent words.

  ‘Who’s the ape?’ he muttered to Scrooge.

  The American looked round. ‘Dwight Dugglehorn Tacker IV,’ he said. ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance.’ With that he raised the rifle in his arms, aimed it at Mr Scrooge’s head and said smartly, ‘Now for the second time today, Ebenezer, I’m going to have to ask you to duck.’

  Cratchit jumped, unable to fathom the American’s behaviour, and spinning round saw with a most horrid and unaccustomed shock that a stranger was standing in between himself and Mr Scrooge. He must have wandered in through the door behind Cratchit, and what’s more he was reaching out to Scrooge in a most awkward and unnatural posture, as though his back was broken, or he was miming the shape of a tree.

  The energy of their recent adventures was still in Scrooge’s veins so, although he was an old man, he leapt to the floor quite acrobatically. There suddenly followed a cracking sound that reverberated devastatingly loud through the room, seeming to Cratchit as though it was an outward expression of the shock the stranger’s appearance had caused to him.

  The strange man was thrown backwards almost to the door as the bullet hit him, but landed still on his feet. He said nothing, and did not even seem surprised, but – most remarkable to Cratchit – started walking forwards again towards Scrooge. Cratchit looked again upon his visitors as though to wonder whether any of them were real, and if this might all be a fearful dream in which nothing made sense, and the next person to appear would be his Uncle Peregrin, with his wood
en eye and striped cockatoo. He sat down quickly and put his hand to his forehead as the American strode forward, threw a blanket over the bleeding but docile stranger, wrapped him up in it, kicked him out of the door and locked it afterwards.

  Cratchit’s breath began to return, and the lights to stop dancing and tingling at the top of his eyes while Mr Scrooge rose and dusted himself off, looking for all the world rather excited.

  ‘Great! My delivery arrived ahead of me,’ said Tacker, at once forgetting the stranger outside and examining a large wooden crate which had arrived several days ago and had been standing in the corner ever since, attracting mystified looks from the clerks (the few who Scrooge had not yet dismissed for their holidays early, and who would shortly excuse themselves). At once the American, with a good number of colloquial expressions the Englishman had not heard of (and a couple they pretended not to have), began levering the box open with a hammer fetched by Mr Scrooge.

  Cratchit’s attention was elsewhere. The man who had been shot by Tacker (and shot so casually) was now standing upright again in the courtyard, the blanket discarded. He wandered around in a figure-of-eight pattern before noticing the light from the window, and coming slowly towards it. There were so many fantastic circumstances about him that Cratchit hardly knew what to be most amazed or appalled by. He seemed to feel no pain from his wound, nor to feel the cold that leaked in through his torn shirt. Nor, after a first outpouring from the wound in his chest, did he seem to be bleeding: the liquid which had come out was already and congealed into the consistency of treacle.

  ‘I cannot be awake,’ whispered Cratchit to himself, ‘because I believe this man is not alive.’ The spectre approached the window and now stood in front of it, reaching out with his arms, but apparently lacking the wit to climb (which would have been well within his corporeal strength, had he been alive) onto the window ledge to break in. Instead his fingertips drummed ineffectually upon the pane, which dull repetitive sound had an uncomfortable effect on Cratchit’s nerves. He heard the noise of rending wood and then the click and snap of machinery being assembled behind him, but no curiosity could persuade him to move his gaze from the creature on the other side of the glass.

  ‘Dead,’ he murmured, peering closer at the dull swivelling eyes, skewed mouth, and the expression of slack stupidity. ‘You blunder through the world, feeling nothing but a distant sense of woe. Insensible … joyless … no more than a stupid beast, wasting away until you’re no longer there. My God …’ he whispered with awe. ‘You’re just like me!’

  This spell of macabre fascination had brought his face as close to the glass as a child’s to a specimen of poisonous snake at the zoo, revelling in the apparent danger and actual safety. Yet before he could bring himself out of the reverie, in its frustration the creature threw its arms forth again harder and smashed the window in, so that Cratchit had to leap backwards and turn away. As glass showered on his back, he saw both the other men standing facing him. Scrooge held a smart and shining brand-new rifle, levelled at shoulder height, while Tacker held forth a double-barrelled shotgun.

  ‘What’s this?’ Cratchit was about to ask, but decided it was instead a matter of greater urgency to duck and retreat to one side, to watch.

  ‘Now,’ said Tacker patiently, as the creature finally gained the windowsill by a jumbling-up of its knees and elbows, ‘remember what I said before. Stay still until you’re happy with your aim, take a deep breath, hold it, and … squeeze the trigger.’

  Cratchit regarded this approach as an unwarrantedly cool one, seeing as the dead man, now that he had broken the glass and gained the windowsill, seemed rather to have come alive in his deadness, and to be intent on consummating his siege and storming the fortress, and was baring his teeth in a most unfriendly and atavistic manner. The only thing stopping him was a downward-pointing spike of broken glass on which he had stuck his head, and which for the moment kept him confusedly fixed to the spot.

  Cratchit’s gaze passed from him to the others and back again, until there was an explosion, and much smoke, and considerable pain to the ears, and an empty window. Scrooge and Tacker walked over and looked out, and made disappointed humming noises.

  ‘Okay,’ said the American. ‘Were you aiming dead centre at his heart?’

  ‘I was,’ replied the kindly old man.

  ‘Then your aim is up a bit and to the left. Possibly the impact of the shot is swaying you, and it’s a matter of practice.’

  The immediate panic seemed to be over, and in the hiatus Scrooge endeavoured to explain to his anxious partner about the creatures they had encountered in the streets. To Cratchit it all sounded rambling and confused and more than a little insane. The only thing he understood was that Marley had, somehow, apparently come back to life, a fact that he did not meet with the incredulity it deserved, but only provoked the glum remark:

  ‘I suppose that means I’m not your partner any more?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Bob. We buried him again.’

  Cratchit nodded gloomily, as though this seemed hardly to settle the matter, with Marley having been buried at least twice before, although he perked up when Tacker added:

  ‘And I pulled his arms off. Here …’ The American explored deeper into the crate and began to lay complex pieces of machinery on the desk in front of the two men, who watched in fascination.

  ‘Now, I know it’s not usual to make a sales pitch late on Christmas Eve, but it would seem that this is a special case. We might have a chance to use them this very evening. Gun ownership in America is far higher than in this country, and I want to change that.’

  Scrooge coughed discreetly to cover the bewildered silence that followed.

  ‘Why?’ asked Cratchit.

  ‘The right to bear arms is enshrined in our constitution, and I’m saying maybe it ought to be in yours. If you had one, that is.’

  ‘I don’t dispute your need or desire to own guns and shoot them off until you’re quite blue in the face and filled with as many holes as a colander,’ said Cratchit. ‘In fact, I think it’s positively to be encouraged. But why bother us with it?’

  ‘I see it this way. We gave ourselves the right to bear arms to protect ourselves from the British in the first place, after the War of Independence. And you’re still surrounded by them all the time! So you need more!’ He busied himself with getting more guns out of the crate, rather amused with his own facetious logic.

  ‘So is what he’s saying true? About the dead coming to life?’ Cratchit asked Tacker in a whisper. ‘I just always expect, at his age, you know, he might be starting to go …’ Cratchit made a looping gesture with his finger around his earlobe but stopped when he noticed that Scrooge was frowning at him, and pretended to be tucking one of his few remaining curls back behind his ear.

  ‘’Fraid so,’ said Tacker, clicking two large pieces of metal together, shouldering the resulting contraption and with his spare hand unlocking and raising a sash window. ‘C—— knows what’s going on, but there are men in the street who aren’t alive, and aren’t dead either. And they seem to be eating each other … Look,’ he whispered, ‘here’s one now.’

  The other two crammed around him at the window. Indeed, in the small yard to the back of the building stood another man. He had the superficial look of one stupefied through drink, but there was a stiffness in his gait that was more like a puppet’s movement than a man’s. Still the two Englishmen were uncertain.

  ‘How do you know he’s not sleepwalking?’ asked Cratchit, fascinated.

  ‘Partly because of the mud all over his clothes and hands, which shows he just crawled out of the earth,’ said Tacker. ‘And partly because of this.’ With that, he let off a blast from the shotgun on his shoulder. Both of the Englishmen jumped and shouted aloud in fright, and when they returned to the window saw that the man outside had been picked up bodily by the blast, and wrapped around a railing at the rear of the courtyard, twenty feet away.

  ‘Now that’s your Tacker
Ten-Bore, probably a stronger weapon than is needed in your market, and pretty loud to boot.’

  ‘Loud, you say,’ whispered Cratchit, who was still shaking from head to toe.

  ‘Pardon?’ shouted Scrooge, putting his hands to his ears and checking them for blood.

  ‘However, for you Brits, I have this,’ and he raised a lighter-looking firearm. ‘I’ve done my research and shotguns in Britain are less accurate, heavier and average out at roughly triple the price of our Tacker Twelve-Bore, a gun which is handmade with care yet as consistent and precise as though it was machine-tooled. They never stick, and have a repeat accuracy up in the eighty percentile, unlike your English guns, which average fifty, sixty per cent tops.’

  After Scrooge retired to fetch himself a glass of brandy and water, and to have a little bit of a cry, Cratchit said, ‘Let me have a go.’

  ‘So, don’t hold it too tight,’ advised Tacker, ‘and follow the sight there …’

  The dead man had been slowly unfurling himself from the iron railings and now raised himself to full height, obliging Mr Cratchit with his aim. As he took two slow steps forward Cratchit levelled the barrel at his chest and fired. It was with a sense of excited satisfaction the like of which he had never felt before that he saw the body lift up into the air again and thump against a far wall. Cratchit stood back, his eyes gleaming, rubbing his sore shoulder.

  ‘You’ll get used to the recoil,’ said Tacker, ‘but a not unmanageable weapon, do you agree?’

  ‘Let me go again,’ said Cratchit greedily, his hands stretching out for the gun. ‘I want to pretend it’s my wife.’

  ‘Let Scrooge take a shot first …’

  ‘No!’ said Cratchit, grabbing the gun.

  ‘Okay,’ said Tacker patiently, and as he explained to Cratchit how to reload, a fortified Scrooge returned to their side.