The Ghosts of Christmas Past

by Andy Conway

  — 13 —

  MRS HUDSON RAPPED ON the back door to the theatre, casting a wary glance over her shoulder at the shabby row of tenements. This morning it had seemed a place that threatened danger, but now the hum of activity, the clanking of machinery, the chatter and yelling of workers about their business made it seem so safe. Night would fall by four and then perhaps the danger would return, like a dark tide creeping in.

  The door opened and Fred gave a flustered look of apology, at forgetting her, at leaving her behind. They went through to the lumber room where Belle lived. She was pacing the rug, biting a finger, her face flushed at the effort of running back.

  “There’s no time,” she said. “I should run to Mrs Jowett and beg her to intercede, but there’s no time.”

  Mrs Hudson went to her and hugged her, as much to stop her pacing up and down as anything. Fred slumped on the chaise longue.

  “I’m doomed,” said Belle. “Swingeford will turf me out on the streets. Perhaps he will even stop the performance. What am I to do?”

  “I’ll help you,” said Fred.

  She turned, surprised, as if her pet dog had offered help. “And what will you do, Fred Smith?”

  “I don’t know. Everything in my power.”

  And as he said the word power, he whimpered, as if he realized he had no power. With not a penny on him, he was poorer than Belle, poorer than every street urchin on New Street who might at least have a penny to their name. Fred Smith had nothing.

  But Belle smiled and went to him. He stood and took her hands.

  Mrs Hudson coughed.

  Belle glanced back, looked at the rug, blushed and moved away.

  “It’s strange,” she said. “I don’t feel the strictures of propriety with you. Both of you. It’s as if none of the rules of our society apply anymore. Perhaps because I see in you that they are gone.”

  She looked to them with a clear, honest gaze, longing for them to affirm it.

  “They are,” Fred said. “In my time.”

  “Careful,” Mrs Hudson said.

  “She knows. You know she knows.”

  “I’ve seen that time, Mrs Hudson. And more importantly, I’ve felt it.”

  “What did that feel like?” he asked.

  “It felt like shackles had been taken from my limbs. It felt lighter.”

  Mrs Hudson stepped forward and placed herself between them. Fred slumped back down. It was vitally important that these two did not fall in love, that Fred did not interfere with this time. She knew it, it was a violent instinct that rose inside her, but she couldn’t remember why it was important.

  “Belle, my dear, tell me what will happen today. Tell me why you are so scared.”

  “Swingeford will go to his sister, Mrs Jowett, and she will tell him that you are not my family at all. She knows the truth. I was an orphan foundling, left on the steps of her own chapel. She placed me in the orphanage herself. She has taken care of me my whole life but she will not lie for me.”

  “Will she stand by while you are thrown out on the street?” Mrs Hudson asked.

  “I have failed her. She will no longer intervene in my fortunes. She has done enough. She has said it many times. I am to make my own way in the world. I rather thought this might be that way.” She looked around at the jumble of theatrical props and stage panels. “How could I think that the theatre could change anything?”

  “And what of Mr Dickens?” Mrs Hudson asked. “He’s crucial to this, I feel.”

  “Oh, he’s going to review the play. I understand he is here to write a scathing, humorous review of our provincial theatre. The nation will laugh at us and he will be paid a few guineas. I had hoped to intercede and to persuade him to treat us fairly but it’s hopeless.”

  “We’re here to help you,” Fred said. “I’m certain of it.”

  Mrs Hudson tutted and shook her head.

  “The actors will be here soon,” said Belle. “The star performer, Mr Aldridge will arrive at two. Any moment now. What am I to do?”

  Mrs Hudson took her hands again. “Do nothing.”

  “How can I do nothing?”

  “If that awful man comes and throws you out on the street, think about it then. Until he does, the show must go on.”

  “But he might cancel the show.”

  “And if he dares, let him. But until then, it carries on. And as for Mr Dickens; leave him to me.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I think I know why he’s really here.” She tapped her nose.

  Belle nodded and seemed to accept that Mrs Hudson knew what she was doing. She didn’t really know anything, but Dickens was central to this, she was certain. She’d been seeking this moment in time all her life and it was all about Dickens coming to Birmingham, but that was all she could remember of it.

  “I’ll set up the theatre then,” Belle said. She took one of the Carcel lamps and walked out.

  They listened to her footsteps up the corridor. A door clanked as she bustled into the bowels of the building.

  “You think that’s the best thing?” Fred said. “Do nothing?”

  “This thing we have, we need to avoid interfering. Messing up the past can... Oh, terrible things.” She couldn’t remember what they were, but she felt the dread of them. Some quite awful things had happened. Losing one’s whole life, for instance. Losing everything, so that you were a stranger in your own life. Rather like this disease she had. Her memory disintegrating cell by cell every moment, till she was a stranger in her own life. Soon there would be nothing left of herself, nothing left of her memories, and she would be lost. And that was all you had to define yourself: your memories. That was all you had in the world.

  “You’ve never used this to change the past?” Fred asked.

  She shook her head. “I did once intervene to make sure my parents met for the first time. They had their first dance at Moseley Institute. A lovely dance night in... 1934. Benny Orphan and his Orchestra.”

  “That’s...”

  “What?”

  “That’s this week,” Fred said. “You know. Back where I’m from. It’s all confusing.”

  “Yes. Hard to get your head around. Especially a head as addled as mine.”

  “So you have intervened?”

  “Only to make sure the past stayed exactly as it was. Someone was trying to threaten it, you see. I made sure it stayed the same. I don’t remember the details now. I just remember that my parents always told me they fell in love at that dance. If it didn’t happen, I wouldn’t be here. In a way.”

  “So doing nothing is always best?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “I can’t believe that. I can’t see all this, this terrible poverty and privation, all the things that are wrong here — I can’t see all this and do nothing.”

  “It’s Dickens,” she said, distracted. “The reason we’re here is something to do with Dickens. I know it. I just wish I could remember why.”

  “Well, perhaps that’s why you’re here. But I know I’m here for something to do with Belle.”

  Of course he thought that. He was in love with her. He’d been in love with her since the moment he’d clapped eyes on her. It was obvious. And she with him. Mrs Hudson felt she should stop it, but wasn’t that also interfering?

  “Well, let’s go and help her, then,” she said, and added with a wry smile, “The show must go on.”

  — 14 —

  THERE WAS NOTHING HE could do.

  Dickens watched the boy skulk out of the shop. It was heartrending. He had seen quite clearly the father-son rift that played out before his eyes, like a Greek tragedy performed on the stage. And his own part in it did not escape him. His baulking at the use of child labour had led to the boy being thrown out. There was nothing he could say. The awful old miser had taken him at his word and given him what he demanded. Charles Dickens was well and truly hoist on his own petard. Or rather, quite tragically, the boy Tim Cratchit had been hoist on Dickens’ peta
rd.

  A family torn asunder, and at Christmas too. All he could do was make amends in some way. He caught Forster’s warning glare and lowered his eyes. The only thing to do now was to let this deal be done so that no more harm came to the likes of the Cratchits.

  Mr Swingeford clapped his hands and took them all by surprise. “Well, I’ll not sit here idly and talk business over tea. I prefer to walk. Gentlemen?” He ushered them to the door.

  “I like to walk,” said Charles. “A fine idea.”

  They trudged out to the cold street, teeming with life, and the incessant hum of manufacture. It was almost as he’d written about in Pickwick years ago, when he’d exaggerated it, of course. The hum of labour resounding from every house, the whirl of wheels and noise of machinery, the din of hammers, the dead heavy clanking of engines from every quarter. It was almost like the ceaseless roar of London.

  “Since I am to impress upon you the capabilities of this town, as that is why you are here, let me show you what this town is capable of.” Swingeford strode into the street and crossed to the other side.

  They walked up a while, weaving their way between the promenading townsfolk, dressed in the finest fashions, Dickens noted.

  “There is a great deal of the Greek about the architecture,” Forster said.

  “The Greek Revival is the fashion, I am told,” said Swingeford. “But you may note it is that hour of the day when the fashionable elite of Birmingham take their afternoon stroll and promenade to observe the art works.”

  Dickens looked all around for the art works but could only see the great Gothic facade of the grammar school and the view down the street marked Peck Lane, which plummeted down to something that was clearly not a fashionable street in the Greek revival style. He stared hypnotized. Down there was grime and dirt and squalor: the fetid horror of the poverty that pursued him in his nightmares.

  “I see there are shabby slums just within spitting distance of this grand boulevard,” he noted drily.

  “Ha. The Froggery,” Swingeford sneered. “It will soon be gone. A new railway station is planned and I am to be a major stakeholder in its creation. A grand, central station. It will wipe all of that off the face of the earth.”

  “Grand, and central, Charles,” said Forster. “You were only saying this morning how that’s what this place needs.”

  “Indeed.”

  “But that’s not what I wanted to show you.” Swingeford pointed across New Street at the building opposite with his cane.

  He had crossed the street purely so they could take in the full majestic sweep of the building Dickens hadn’t noticed in the gloom this morning.

  It had three storeys; the ground and first floor fronted with Doric pillars, and on top of those sat four statues. Above them, a giant hoarding of Greek letters carved into the stone.

  ΠANTEXNHΘHKA

  Dickens squinted. “What on earth is that?”

  “The home of Birmingham art works.”

  “But what does it say?”

  “Pantecknicker,” said Swingeford.

  “I don’t think it does,” said Dickens. “There are more syllables in it for a start.”

  “It says Pantechnetheca,” said Forster.

  “Ah, the benefits of a classical education,” Dickens joked.

  “Pantecknicker. That’s what I said.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  “I don’t think it means anything,” said Forster. “Nothing I recognize.”

  “It’s Greek,” said Swingeford, sneering, as if these men were yokels from the Black Country. “Come, let’s go inside and ye shall wonder.”

  He crossed back over. Dickens gave Forster a sour look.

  “Let’s play along, Charles,” Forster said. “You can pretend, can’t you?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. Dickens followed him across the street and entered the grand building to find a palatial showroom that was more like a museum. The art works were displayed on stands or in glass cases around the great hall of a building, and reverent gentlemen and ladies walked awestruck among them. But for the evidence of the counters and the clear indication that the artworks were being wrapped up and purchased, one would not know that this was a shop at all.

  “Here you will find all manner of valuable manufactured articles with a concentration of goods from the local area,” Swingeford said, as if it were his own museum and he were its sole benefactor. “They once scoffed at the idea that the manufactures might be seen as arts, but we have proved them wrong.”

  “I thought the arts were pursued entirely for their own sake,” Dickens said.

  “They may be that,” said Swingeford.

  “But these are produced for profit.”

  “The Brummagem article was once a term of abuse but has now become a thing admirable as a work of art.”

  The ridiculous effrontery of it, Dickens thought, trying not to laugh out loud. They could call it a ‘depository for the arts’ and that meant that Birmingham wares belonged within the brackets of the arts.

  “I suspect you think me a country bumpkin from the provinces,” Swingeford said. “But this is a city of manufacture that is putting London in the shade. I see your capital producing nought but disease and immigrants.”

  Dickens stiffened and felt Forster squeeze his arm. His friend feared he might punch the old miser and it must have shown in his face because Swingeford cackled with malicious glee.

  “You bring your business to Birmingham because you suspect you can get it on the cheap,” he said. “But beware this city’s reputation of itself. A Birmingham art-work is becoming renowned around the world.”

  “Art-works?” Dickens said. “You mean trinkets and baubles and machine parts?”

  “Yes, that I do. And all come to the Pantecknicker to see them on display.”

  Dickens shook Forster’s hand off and stroked his spasming cheek. That wretched rheumatism striking him at the most inopportune moments.

  “Oh, how now, dear brother? What have we here?”

  They turned and bowed to the elderly lady who sidled up to them.

  “Gentlemen,” Swingeford said, with a hint of discomfort, “allow me to introduce my dear sister, Mrs Jowett. Mr Forster and Mr Dickens.”

  “Mr Dickens? The author?” Mrs Jowett asked.

  “Mr John Huffam, please,” Forster hissed. “He is travelling incognito.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Mrs Jowett. She held out her gloved hand and both gentlemen kissed it. She looked all around, as if she’d forgotten something, as if something else entirely was on her mind.

  “I rather believe our mutual friend might be ashamed of coming to do honest business in this backwater,” Swingeford growled.

  “Not at all,” said Forster. “We merely thought it a necessary precaution. Everywhere Charles goes he is mobbed. The poor fellow has no privacy.”

  “So this is almost like a holiday for you,” Mrs Jowett said.

  “You might say that,” Dickens answered. Distracted as she was, she was altogether more agreeable than her wretched brother and he sensed a charitable soul.

  She lowered her voice and took his hand. “Mr Dickens, I did so admire Oliver Twist and your bold choice to present a novel with a child protagonist.”

  “I hadn’t fully thought that it had not been done before,” Dickens said, looking modestly at his shoes.

  “A child cannot be a main character,” Swingeford said. “Why, they have no intelligence, no character at all. A child’s soul is barely formed until they come of age at 21, and even then their experience of life is not worthy of examination.”

  “I beg to differ,” Dickens said through gritted teeth. “Go out on that street and you’ll find children whose experience of life is nothing but want and need. They are cast half-formed into the Battle of Life that privileged old men are protected from, they struggle in squalor, with shame and hunger, and they bear the brunt of man’s ignorance. Why, I could walk through that Froggery you so despise
and in a half hour find ten score children who have more experience of the world than every man who sits in Sir Robert Peel’s parliament right now.”

  “Hear hear,” said Mrs Jowett. “Well said.”

  “Humbug,” said Swingeford. “Now, if you gentlemen would excuse me for a few moments, there is a pressing family matter I wish to discuss with my sister. Please do explore the art-works to your content.”

  He took Mrs Jowett’s arm and led her off.

  “Charles, I’m sorry,” Forster said.

  “How can I enter into business with that ‘fine old English gentleman’, that gammon, that Tory?”

  “Because that’s the way of the world now, Charles.”

  “Never, I won’t accept it.”

  “They are the government now. Their locomotive rides through this land and nought will stop it, I fear.”

  “And it rides over the backs of all of us.”

  “Aye, I fear it does at that.”

  “But while it does there’s money to be made from it? Is that it? The country’s done for!”

  Forster sighed. “Charles, it is my job to make sure you make money. You are approaching bankruptcy. Your periodical, your art, will not find its way into the world without investment by the likes of Mr Swingeford.”

  “I think I’d rather go find my way in that slum.”

  Forster let out a benign chuckle. “You wouldn’t last a day, Charles, you’re a man who’s never seen dirt and grime up close at all.”

  Dickens gasped, an icicle piercing his heart. His cheek spasmed again. The smile fell from Forster’s face when Charles turned a glare on him of such ferocity that he seemed to fear for his life.

  “You know nothing of the dirt and grime and hard work I might have seen, John. You know nothing of my life.”