Finally the time for pudding arrived; the mother snuck away from the table to fetch the pudding and, as she returned, the pudding glazed in brandy and a secret extra drop of the magic liquid, the whole room fell into a hush, struck with awe, almost meditative. Whatever feuds had made them forget the prospect of the pudding were now put aside; they became as children again, united by that domed gastronomic spectacle that was slowly bouncing towards them on a plate in the mother’s hand. The pudding on the table, Frank lit a match and the pudding erupted in a delicate fiery glow. The glow subsided, the pudding was cut and each took a piece, silent as the ceremony demanded.

There was no difference at first in the pudding’s taste, for the brandy and the extra drop of the magic liquid had kept the flavour much the same as it always was. Only, the after-taste was different; there was something vaguely bitter, almost metallic, about the taste it left at the back of your mouth. And they noticed, for just a moment, that they did not want to stop arguing. It was only a very brief moment, like that point when you realise you could avoid that extra piece of cake but choose nevertheless to keep eating. The pudding was only a comma in whatever terse sentence they had already begun. They chewed, swallowed and resumed their sentences.

“Honestly, Frank,” said Sam, “you talk to me like I’m a child. I’ve sold thousands of packing cases and you only live in a shoe box. What can you possibly tell me about investment?”

And Tiffany said, “Well, Wendy, if you don’t want to hear what I have to say…”

And Suzy said, “Uncle Frank, you’re the worst uncle I’ve ever had…”

Only the mother and Sasha noticed what was happening, having left their helpings to last. They looked at each other, and looked at the pudding, and looked at each other again. What was going wrong? the mother asked herself. Did they need to eat more pudding? Perhaps there had not been enough of the liquid; perhaps she should add some more…

She was just about to go to the kitchen to get the bottle when there was a knock on the door. Opening the door, she found three of the neighbouring families standing outside, half-eaten puddings in hand, fury plastered over their faces.

“This pudding,” said one of the neighbours, his face a fiery red, “does not work. It hasn’t made us happier; it’s only made things worse.”

“We knew you were trouble,” said another neighbour, “the first time we saw you. Look what you’ve done to our family, you and your infernal pudding.”

The mother stood at the door, her eyes starting to sting.

“I don’t know what’s happened,” she said. “I just don’t know.”

Go to Day Six

When the mother and father came back inside, their search yielding no results, the mother got back to the task of making the pudding. She looked at the mixture; it was all ready, except for one more ingredient. There was a small bottle in the pantry that had no label on it. The bottle was only ever used once a year, to make the Christmas pudding. Did she have enough left to make all the puddings this year? She hoped she would; a very small amount was usually enough, but this year she would need more than usual. Even if she had enough for this year, the bottle would run out soon enough and the liquid in the bottle was very hard to get…This, she feared, might be the last year she could make the pudding, and if she could not make it again next year perhaps her children would not come to visit…

She took the bottle and tipped in an amount the depth of a little fingernail; almost half of what remained in the bottle. Would it be enough? She did not know; but she was too afraid to use any more.

When Christmas came, she distributed the puddings to the neighbouring families on neighbouring hills. They all gave her presents to thank her, but none of the presents would be enough to buy her another bottle of that secret liquid. Though her heart was heavy with that knowledge, it gave her happiness to see that her puddings were soon to be shared.

And soon enough her whole family had converged on the old family home – Frank from his shoe box on the hill; Tiffany from the doll’s house with her husband Bill and their little girl Suzy; Sam and Wendy, with their child on the way; and Sasha and Hector, from their home inside the car.

(“Why did you leave them until last?” asks Alana. “Because they are the most important,” says Peter. A pause. “Are you sleepy yet?” he asks. “A little,” says Alana. “How much is there left in the story?” “A bit,” says Peter. “It has to get better before it’s over, and it has to get worse before it gets better.” Silence. He keeps going.)

The mother was happy to see all her children together, and so was the father, but he showed it by telling his oldest son that he needed to get out of that shoe box and she showed it by telling Sasha that that old car would be no good when they had children. Secretly, they accepted their children just as they found them, but they could never let it show.

(“Peter,” says Alana. “Yes?” he replies, then waits because she is silent again. “Nothing,” she says, after a time. “Keep telling the story.”)

By the time the food was ready to be served, the children had already found their old places at the table, and their old places in the family too. Frank had told Sam that his house was a bad investment; Sam had told Frank that he knew nothing about investments; Tiffany had told Wendy all that she knew about pregnancy and Sasha had begun to roll her eyes at Tiffany; all the while, the poisoned pudding sat in the kitchen, waiting to be eaten, waiting to take the family gathering further and further along the path it was already starting to tread. And lurking somewhere outside, from a spot in the garden where he could see it all, crouched the goblin, licking his metallic lips with excitement.

The mother watched patiently as the children, now grown-ups, slipped back into their old roles and the partners watched too, sometimes calmly, sometimes with frustration, sometimes weighing in. The mother was less distressed, because she knew that the lunch could never grow so hostile that the pudding could not fix it. Only, the pudding always had to come last; the lunch always had to be endured before the pudding could emerge and right all wrongs.

Go to Day Five

The goblin knew that at the foot of one of the hills lived a very bitter family. Life had been hard for that family and, with every misfortune, they had planted bitter fruit in their garden – gourds and eggplant and bitter melon and the bitterest of grapefruit that you could find. There was not a plant in their garden that was not bitter, and with each new misfortune they planted more and more, until their garden was bitter even just to walk in. The goblin’s plan was that he would visit that family’s garden one night and, when they were sleeping and dreaming their bitter dreams he would take one of each of the fruit in the garden until he had the bitterest array of ingredients he could find. Then he would blend all the bitter fruit together to make a juice, and then he would take some of the juice and mix it with the Christmas pudding mixture before it was cooked and distributed to the neighbouring families on neighbouring hills. Whatever magic the pudding contained would be destroyed by the bitterness of the bitter juice he would add.

Every day and every night as Christmas approached, the goblin watched the mother through the kitchen window so that he was ready when the moment came for her to make the puddings. He did not stir from his place perched by the windowsill until the day finally came when the mother entered the kitchen and began to take out boxes of dried fruit, jars of flour, cartons of milk and eggs…He watched and watched as she mixed the ingredients together, hoping upon hope that he could see what the ingredient was that made the pudding so magical. If he could see what that ingredient was, then perhaps he could steal it and prevent its ever being used again…As he watched, he began to grow anxious, fearful that his plan would not work, fearful that he could not be able to poison the puddings without the mother noticing…His palms began to sweat, and, as they sweated, he began to lose his grip by the window…His hands slipped, and slipped, until he fell to the ground beneath the windowsill.

Now, you may never have heard a goblin fall.

(“I have.”)

Well then, you would know that when a goblin falls, it tends to make a large sound, because there is so much evil machination at work inside the goblin that it clangs like a sack of metal pots being dropped on a hard floor. The ground where the goblin fell was not hard, but it still made quite an impressive sound when he fell – so impressive that the mother looked out the window to see what had made that noise. She could not see anything from the window, but she called her husband to look too, and soon they had both come outside to look for the source of that mysterious noise.

Now, goblins are loud when they fall but, being subterranean creatures, they are used to having to get up again quickly.

(“That doesn’t make sense,” says Alana. “Yes it does; they fall down all the time, on hard rock ground and need to get up again. Now just let me tell the story.”)

No sooner had the mother gone to get the father to help her than the goblin had picked himself up and snuck behind the doorway nearest to the kitchen, waiting for an opportunity to strike. It came; the mother and the father ran out the door, looking eagerly everywhere but behind the now opened door; lithely, the goblin crept out from behind the door, his bitter juice in hand. He snuck into the kitchen, spied the giant mixing bowl on the bench and, pulling himself up onto a stool by the bench (because, being a goblin, he was also quite short), he tipped a thimbleful of the bitter juice into the middle of the mixture, then another thimbleful to the left side, another to the right, and three more at random spots on either side. Too much and the mother might have noticed; too little and it might not have spread throughout the whole mixture. This, he hoped, would be just enough. Then, fearful of being caught, the goblin jumped down from the stool, clanging a little as he did so, and crept out the still-open door.

Go to Day Four

The Story of the Goblin Who Poisoned the Christmas Pudding

Once upon a time, there was a goblin.

(“You don’t know what the story is about,” says Alana. “You’re stalling.” “Just listen,” says Peter. “Okay…” says Alana.)

Once upon a time, there was a goblin, and he…

No, once upon a time, there was a family.

(“Make up your mind,” says Alana. “I have,” says Peter. “I meant to say it’s about a family.” “Alright,” says Alana, “tell me about the family.”)

Well then, there was a family, and the family had two boys and two girls. The boys and the girls were all grown up and had moved away from home, but because it was Christmas they were coming back to their parents’ home.

(“Where did they live?” asks Alana.)

The oldest boy lived…in a shoe-box, perched on top of a hill. It was a giant shoe-box, left there one day by a giant who bought a pair of shoes and then ran away, causing an earthquake and destroying three towns in his wake. The earthquake caused a housing crisis, and so the oldest boy couldn’t get a house anywhere, but then one day he found the shoe-box and it was just the right size for him to live in, so he grabbed all his belongings and stored them inside the shoe box and lived there at night, working very hard all through the week in the hope that one day he could buy himself a better house, or, failing that, a giant packing case somewhere.

The oldest daughter, who was next in age after the oldest boy…

(“What was her name?” asks Alana.)

The oldest daughter, Tiffany, who was next in age after the oldest boy, Frank, lived on the next hill in a giant doll’s house, where she lived with her husband Bill. Frank wasn’t married yet; he had a lot of girls who came to visit him in his shoe box, but none of them ever stayed. So he often spent time with Tiffany and Bill, and when Tiffany had a child, a little girl called Suzy, Uncle Frank often came over, sometimes to see Suzy, sometimes just to get out of his shoe box. Tiffany would tease Frank about his life in the shoe box, but she loved her brother very much and had always been close to him.

The youngest girl, Sasha, lived several hills away from Tiffany and Frank. She lived there with her husband…Hector.

(“Hector?” asks Alana, giggling. “Why Hector?” “Because his parents liked the name, of course,” says Peter. “Now stop interrupting.” Alana stops.)

She lived with her husband Hector…inside a car. The car was all that they could afford for now, but they hoped that one day they might own a shoe box, or a packing case, or even a house. But Sasha was happy not living too close to Tiffany or Frank. She saw them at Christmas and that was enough for her.

The fourth child, Sam, lived further away still. He and his wife Wendy were about to have a baby and so they had bought a house…

(“A house?”)

They had bought a house, because Sam had made a lot of money selling giant packing cases as a form of low-cost housing. As a result, they owned a two bedroom house at the foot of a hill and were very happy there.

And so: it was Christmas, and the whole family were returning to their parents’ house to celebrate together. It was the only time when the whole family saw each other these days, what with Sasha and Sam living so far away. They were not such a close family any more, but they always united at Christmas, particularly because they all loved their mother’s Christmas pudding.

There was something magical about that pudding. The saddest person in the world could eat it and they would feel happy. If you had the ‘flu, you could eat that pudding and you would feel better. If you were in the middle of an argument with someone, one bite of the pudding would make you the best of friends. And so, even though the children were not close during the year…

(“Except for Tiffany and Frank…”)

…except for Tiffany and Frank, they would always come together over that pudding. Whatever differences or disagreements they had, the pudding would always appease them.

(“It sounds like an amazing pudding.”)

It was a truly amazing pudding.

But…inside the hill, near where the parents lived, there was a goblin. Being a goblin, he was wicked, and, being wicked, he delighted in nothing more than to see other creatures be miserable. The goblin had heard the reputation of the mother’s Christmas pudding which was spreading far and wide, and he hated what he heard, because the pudding did the exact opposite of what he liked most to do. Where he tried to bring misery and discord, the pudding brought happiness and unity. The goblin hated the pudding.

And so he formed a plan. He knew that other families on nearby hills were also wanting to get themselves some of the pudding. They made their request and the mother agreed: she would make extra puddings this year and give them to other families on neighbouring hills. This meant that the happiness would spread further than the family our story is concerned with; BUT the goblin worked out that if he could somehow poison the pudding, with a poison that would take away all its happiness and replace it instead with misery, then the goblin could succeed in not only making our main family miserable but also all the families living on nearby hills. The plan was perfect. The goblin only needed to know how to poison the pudding.

Go to Day Three

Today is the first Sunday of Advent and this year I have decided to see Advent in with a story that I have written. It is the 200th anniversary this year of Charles Dickens’ birth and not only was Dickens one of my first and most profound literary influences but also one of the most significant literary chroniclers of Christmas. To celebrate both Advent and Dickens’ bicentenary, I have written a long short story which I will be posting here in daily instalments, finishing on Christmas Day. Please share this literary journey with me and, if you like it, encourage others to join us here at the Consolations of Writing to share it too. Merry Advent to you all! Love Matt

The Gift: A Bedtime Story for Grown-ups, in Five Candles

First Candle

Alana cannot sleep. At least, not properly. Occasionally her mind drops into sleep, but it is only like she is skimming the surface of sleep, sometimes dropping a little below, but always somehow being pulled back up into dry wakefulness.

It is not the first time this has happened; it used to happen often, but not for some time now, and tonight there seems to be no reason for her sleeplessness. As a child, she would be sleepless with apprehension the night before her birthday or on Christmas Eve. Christmas is soon enough, but she is too old to lose sleep over Christmas now, most of all when there’s still four weeks to go until it arrives.

There were other reasons, of course, why she sometimes lost sleep. Sometimes, when she was in her early twenties, she would lie awake thinking, consciously worrying, about whatever it was that was playing on her mind: fears for her future; fears of failing, of being left behind, forgotten, alone. But that is not the case tonight. She has no conscious worries, nothing racing around anxiously in her mind to keep her from sleep. And yet she cannot sleep, simple as that, as though her mind has just forgotten how to.

They had a television, she remembers, when she was a child, which was a particularly temperamental machine. Once, the off-switch stopped working. They would press it in, the screen would go blank for a brief moment, the image shrinking rapidly into the dark vacuum of the screen, and then it would come back on again, like a jack-in-the-box with an overactive spring. She remembers being strangely tormented by that image, as though the television would never properly turn off again and they would be doomed to watch it forever – how strange that a childhood ideal, perpetual television, could when made reality become a source of torment. Well, tonight her brain feels like that television, occasionally playing with the idea of sleep, only to resurrect itself suddenly, laughing macabrely as it does so.

She opens her eyes in a tired act of surrender to wakefulness and looks in the bed beside her. Peter seems, as far as she can tell, to be fast asleep. He doesn’t snore, thank goodness, but when he is asleep his breathing always becomes deeper and slower and at times he makes low mumbling noises which, she fancies, only she knows about. She considers waking him up but decides not to; he looks too peaceful to do that to him. But it’s no good lying in bed trying to sleep when she can’t; she has tried for too long tonight without any luck. And so she reaches for her bedside lamp and her book: a philosophical detective story she had picked up second-hand during the week, from a series that has been recommended to her. She has enjoyed what she has read so far, but something about reading the book tonight only frustrates her. What earlier in the night had seemed light and whimsical now seems affected and ponderous. She can only read a handful of pages before finding herself wrestling with an almost uncontrollable urge to hurl the book at the wall. But she refrains. It would only wake Peter.

Soon she hears his voice beside her.

“Can’t sleep?” he mumbles. The light must have woken him anyway. She could have thrown the book against the wall after all.

“No,” she says. “Did I wake you?”

“You were making a lot of noises,” he says. “Huffing sort of noises.”

“Really?”

“Yep. Disapproving noises.”

“Disapproving?” she asks. “Like what?”

“You know, the kind of noises you make when you don’t like something. Like a tut and a groan combined.”

“Really? I make those sorts of noises?”

“Sometimes,” says Peter. “Didn’t you know?”

“No,” she says, then goes silent. The mixture of insomnia and her husband telling her something she had never known about herself is a dangerous combination and she has the potential to become quite annoyed by him, except that he reaches out and puts his arm around her waist and then says, “I’ll get you a cup of tea.”

For a moment she feels appeased, but calls out, “Make sure it’s chamomile,” as he climbs from the bed.

Most of her potential frustration is pacified by the time Peter returns to the bed with two cups of chamomile tea; most, but not all, because, while he has been gone, she has read more of her detective book and has only become more resentful both of its style and of its heroine.

“This book,” she says, “is really annoying. Seriously, the main character is so self-important. Men should never try to write female protagonists; they never get them right.”

“Is that why you were tutting and huffing before?” asks Peter, handing her the tea.

“Maybe,” she says, “but I still don’t believe I do that.”

“Only sometimes,” he says, then changes the topic. “I’ll tell you a story,” he says.

Alana’s face lights up.

“Really?”

It’s been some time since they have told each other stories. When they were first married, it was an almost nightly occurrence. At first they read to each other, then Peter started to mess around with the details of the story, until the stories he told were almost nothing like, and generally much more amusing than, the stories they had begun with. Before long, Alana found she preferred Peter’s stories to the ones they read, and soon she was even telling stories of her own. The thought of Peter telling her a story tonight after such a long time sparkles and fizzles inside her like she is, momentarily, a child again.

“Yes,” says Peter. “Just give me a moment…”

“Don’t take too long,” says Alana, “or I’ll have to go back to reading my book again…”

“Okay, okay,” says Peter, “just a second. The story is called…”

“No stalling,” says Alana.

“It’s called…the story of…”

“Of what? The story of what?”

“Of the goblin,” he says. “The goblin who…poisoned the Christmas pudding.”

“He poisoned the Christmas pudding?” says Alana, indignant. “That’s not nice.”

“Well no,” says Peter, “but do you expect goblins to be nice?”

Alana pauses. “No,” she says, “but why would he do that?”

“I’ll tell you,” says Peter. “Just listen.”

“Alright,” says Alana, slowly. “But does it have a happy ending?”

“Eventually,” says Peter, “but you’ll have to let me get there.”

“What if I fall asleep when the story is still unhappy?”

“Then you’ve fallen asleep, and that’s good, isn’t it?”

“Not if I have nightmares.”

“Well, if you have nightmares, I’ll wake you up and tell you the happy ending.”

A pause.

“Alright,” says Alana,

“Can I begin then?”

“Yes you may.”

“Very well then. Here it is.”

 

Go to Day Two