The Ghosts of Christmas Past

by Andy Conway

  “I can’t hold on,” Fred said.

  “I’ve got you,” Mrs Hudson said, putting her hand on his brow.

  Soothing, cool. He felt a wave of calm bloom through him like a shot of morphine.

  “He looks feverish,” said Dickens.

  Belle took the keys from her cloak pocket and opened the door. “Let’s get him inside.”

  They lumbered through the ballroom space, dark and cold. There was a hubbub from the Shakespeare tavern to the side, but the door to it was locked. The coffee house on the other side was closed too, but Belle rushed over to it and used her keys again.

  Fred reached out for her. She’d let go. Mrs Hudson had him, but if he flitted now, he’d lose Belle forever.

  Belle opened the door to the coffee room and invited them in. As Mrs Hudson and Dickens carried him through, he grabbed hold of Belle again and whispered, “Don’t let go.”

  “I won’t,” she said.

  She held his hand as they guided him to a row of wooden booths against the outer wall. She slumped onto the bench beside him and Mrs Hudson and Dickens sat opposite.

  “He looks most disoriented,” said Dickens.

  “Hmm,” Forster said, standing over them. “That does remind me of the most amazing adventure I had in returning here.”

  Belle clutched at Mrs Hudson’s sleeve across the table. “We need your help, Mrs Hudson.”

  “She won’t.” Fred shook his head. “She’s been against us all day.”

  Mrs Hudson stroked his brow again. Soothing. Calm. “I’m not against you,” she said. “I’ll do everything I can to help you. Let me get my strength back.”

  “Coffee,” said Belle. “We need coffee.”

  She looked to Dickens. Dickens looked to Forster.

  “I suppose I’ll get us all coffee,” Forster said.

  “There’s a stove over there behind the counter,” Belle called. “There might be coffee left in the big blue enamel pot. I often heat up the leftovers.”

  Forster clattered around back there. “Yes, there’s coffee left. I’ll heat it up. Then I’ll tell you all a such a tale...”

  Fred relaxed into the bench, Belle holding one hand, so tight, Mrs Hudson his other, gentle, hardly touching at all. His agitation sank to a faint hum of interference behind a radio broadcast. But he still wasn’t sure Mrs Hudson wouldn’t pull some sort of trick to keep him and Belle apart.

  “Why?” he asked. “Why would you help us now?”

  “Tell them,” said Dickens. “Tell them about your parents.”

  “My parents married for love,” said Mrs Hudson. “I was telling Charles about it just now. And I can see that you’re in love. Very much. Just like my parents used to be.”

  “You said you couldn’t remember your parents,” said Fred.

  “I said I couldn’t see their faces anymore.” There were tears in her eyes. She looked from his face to Belle’s and then stroked his cheek ever so tenderly. “But their love I do remember. My mother was very happy. The happiest woman in the world.”

  Belle looked up and smiled at this, hope gleaming in her eyes.

  “How could she not be?” said Mrs Hudson. “My father gave her all the love in the world.”

  And her voice cracked. Perhaps she’d only just remembered them and it was all new and raw. Or she was just worn out, like she’d said. It had been such a long day. He thought back to the man who’d arrived this morning, his head bleeding from a fascist’s boot. A different man. A different life.

  “You were a lucky girl to have such parents,” said Belle.

  “Oh, I was. They showed a deep affection for each other till the day they died. It’s a great example to have for a young woman growing up. And they were strongly of the belief that I should choose my own future.”

  “Imagine such a thing,” Dickens said. “Quite revolutionary.”

  “Talking of revolutionary...” Forster called from behind the counter.

  “Isn’t a woman worth as much as a man?” Belle asked. “Why should she be denied what every boy expects as a right?”

  “Not all men expect such things,” said Dickens. “The great many men of this or any city have no opportunity to look above the dirt at their feet. They live lives of great desperation.”

  “They do, Charles,” said Mrs Hudson, “and the richest women in this city, born to wealth and privilege, have less rights and less expectation than the poorest of men. There are no Chartist riots calling for women to have the vote.”

  “Such a thing would be absurd.”

  “And that is the problem,” Belle said.

  Fred squeezed her hand. He was so proud of her.

  “I encountered a very interesting woman on the way here...” said Forster.

  “I’m sorry, Mr Dickens,” Belle continued. “But I’ve always felt myself to be a woman out of time. I’ve always felt that I was cursed: to see through the hollow pretence of this time. I do not wish to settle for what little it allows me. Like a slave, I wish to smash these shackles and run free.”

  “You shall,” said Mrs Hudson. “I’ll help you.”

  And she had such a tender smile. It was a total transformation, Fred thought. They had all been changed so much by this day, and Mrs Hudson too.

  Forster came from the counter with a tray and slid it across the table between them. Five bone china coffee mugs, steaming. “So as I was saying,” he said. “You won’t believe the amazing tale of my journey.”

  “Charles,” said Mrs Hudson. “Don’t you need to talk to Belle about her story?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Dickens.

  “You are formulating the idea of a Christmas story, largely based on the play you have seen tonight.”

  “Hmmm, well, not exactly based on the play,” said Charles, chuckling nervously.

  Fred took his coffee and breathed in its earthy fragrance.

  “Charles,” said Mrs Hudson, “it’s time for a bargain to be made.”

  “A bargain?” said Forster, squeezing in his massive bulk beside Dickens and still half hanging out of the booth. “What kind of bargain?”

  Dickens wagged a finger. “As I pointed out today, there are certain elements of one of my own tales from the Pickwick Papers — the tale of Gabriel Grub, visited by goblins who show him his past and future — that precede Miss Belle’s story. So in a sense, it is already my work. Hmm?”

  Mrs Hudson shook her head with the confident smile of someone who knows they have a winning hand. “I think the tale you have in mind, dear Charles, bears rather more resemblance to Miss Belle’s play than to your Gabriel Grub story.”

  “What is this?” Belle asked.

  “Of course,” said Fred. He saw it now. He knew exactly where Mrs Hudson was going with this.

  “Well, I wish someone would explain it to me,” said Forster.

  “In a way, I shouldn’t really need to pay her anything at all,” said Dickens. “The story is mine.”

  Forster banged the table. “You’re not suggesting that Charles has plagiarized Miss Belle’s work, are you? He wrote his story six years ago.”

  “Not what he wrote,” said Mrs Hudson. “What he will write.”

  “You mean to sue Charles for something he hasn’t even written yet?”

  “It’s all right, Forster,” Dickens said. He took a sip of coffee, smacked his lips and settled down to business. “Mrs Hudson knows the outline of the story I am to write. I have shared the details with her. It is all but written.”

  “You haven’t mentioned this at all, Charles!”

  “It was inspired by tonight’s events. In part. But I will write it and it will be a magnificent success.”

  “Perhaps it’s not so inevitable as you think,” Mrs Hudson said. “Your life’s course will foreshadow certain ends. But if the course be departed from, the end will change.”

  “But I’ve seen the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. I’ve seen my future.”

  Mrs Hudson considered this. A sly smile
. “You’ve seen a future.”

  “What do you mean? I saw that throng listening to my every word. I saw myself reading. I saw my future fame. That cannot be sponged away any more than the writing on poor Susannah Bell’s gravestone.”

  “You saw the shadows of the things that may be, Charles, not necessarily the things that will be. The future is not set in stone. It can always be changed.”

  Charles gasped. “You would seek to rob me of my future fame?”

  “I didn’t say that, Charles. I said that it was only possible to change the future. The good or bad we do today creates the good or bad we reap tomorrow. You know that.”

  “Well, I think I’ve slipped into a dream,” Forster said. “Because I have no idea what anyone is talking about.”

  “I cannot share the writing of a tale,” said Dickens. “It can’t be a story by Charles Dickens after a play created by some woman in Birmingham. That would never do. The public, the readership, need to see something new that has sprung from the imagination of Dickens! That’s how the business works.”

  “Then pay the author for the story,” said Mrs Hudson.

  Charles laughed. “Oh, Miss Belle. You have an excellent literary agent. Look you, Forster. See how it’s done.” He held out his hand to Forster.

  “Charles,” Forster said, “you can’t be thinking of handing over this money to her?”

  “I’m afraid a deal has been made. Did you not hear it struck?”

  “But Charles,” said Forster, “that money is to secure a competitively priced print run for your next book.”

  “The provincial publishing world is too fraught with difficulty. We’re best to stick to London, which may be more expensive, but you pay for the convenience of avoiding all of this.” Dickens flapped his arms to take in the coffee house, the theatre and all around it, as if New Street was a great inconvenience to him.

  Forster reluctantly dug into his pocket, frowned, reached into another pocket, panicked, delved into a third pocket and pulled out a thick envelope with a sigh of relief. He gazed on it, like a man finding his favourite childhood book again, winced, and held it out to Fred.

  Fred looked to Belle.

  Belle reached out and took it.

  Forster gasped.

  Dickens said, “My word.”

  “Well, I’ve seen quite enough of this mad place,” said Forster. “I’m to bed to grab what little sleep I can before our train home, Charles. I’ll call on you at half to seven.” He knocked back his coffee, squirmed out of the booth, retrieved his top hat and bowed to everyone. “I wish you all a good night.”

  “Merry Christmas,” said Mrs Hudson.

  “Humbug!” Forster said and stomped out, muttering about the inconvenience of snow.

  Fred was already imagining how to cash the money. One hundred Victorian pound notes would surely be worth more than £100 in 1936, as collector’s items if not as legal tender.

  “I want to go right this minute,” said Belle. “There is nothing for me here.”

  She shuffled out of the booth, holding onto Fred’s hand, pulling him with her.

  Dizziness and the sick swoon of nausea. Like he was already melting. Soon he would resolve into a dew and be gone.

  Mrs Hudson brought them together and Dickens watched.

  “Now, my darlings,” Mrs Hudson said. “I’ll try my best to help you go back, Fred. You just hold onto this woman and don’t let go.”

  He would hold on for dear life, he thought. The one true thing in this world that mattered to him. He gripped Belle’s hands more tightly. Her fingers laced with his.

  Mrs Hudson put her arms around them and took in a long, deep breath. She closed her eyes and hummed a low note.

  As he felt the ground giving way beneath him, Fred tightened his grip and knew one thing only. He would not let go.

  And with a sudden rush of wind, everything went blue and he and Belle soared straight for the place he called home.

  And they would call home

  — 38 —

  MRS HUDSON STUMBLED. Charles reached out to hold her, motioning her back to the booth. She shook her head.

  “I can’t stay. I’ll be going myself. Just a minute.”

  They stood in the centre of the dimly lit coffee house, the gaslit glow of New Street shining through the stained-glass windows. Snow falling again.

  “I’m so tired,” she said. It had wiped her out.

  “They’ve vanished,” said Dickens. “By Gad, that’s a stupendous magic trick. Better than my feeble efforts at conjuring.”

  “Not a trick you could ever learn,” she said. “Sometimes I think it’s a curse.”

  “But such wonders you see,” he said. “You saw your parents again.”

  “There is that. Although, they were here all day by my side. I just didn’t see them.”

  Fred and Belle. Her parents’ faces had been a blank for so long. Their names stolen by this terrible disease that was eating at her brain. But this thing that was inside her, this curse, this magic, whatever it was — it had brought her here to make sure that her parents met and found home. And she’d tried to prevent it, like a fool.

  “I don’t know if I’ve got anything left to get home,” she said. “I’ll have to try.”

  Charles stepped back, as if she might explode at any moment. “You’re one of the spirits. The spirits can do anything they want.”

  “I’m old and forgetful and I don’t know what power I have anymore. I only know that I can’t stay here.” She nodded to the windows and the snow teeming in the air outside. “This place is death to the old, the sick, the vulnerable.”

  “It shouldn’t be like that.”

  “It shouldn’t. And in my time, it isn’t. But there are always men who want to take us back to the darkness. Men like Swingeford.”

  “We must stop them,” said Charles, “speak out against them. Surely there can be a government, a system of governance that does not crush the poor so that grasping misers can sit on a mountain of gold.”

  “We’ll always have to fight for that, I’m afraid,” she said. “But we’ll always need voices like yours to remind us. Use your voice well, Charles Dickens. Use it for good. Bring out the best in us.”

  “I will,” he said. “I promise.”

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes and thought about home. Christmas Eve, 2019. She reached out to that time, in her heart. It was a little like the feeling of love. It was a little like sending out the spirit in your heart to walk abroad. It was a little like the feeling of Christmas.

  She reached out with all her strength, and succumbed to it.

  A flurry of snow, teeming all about her, the clang of bells and the faint echo of a choir.

  She opened her eyes. The coffee shop had gone. Charles had gone. She was standing in the street.

  A tram was bearing down on her.

  The bell clanged.

  Someone rushed to her and pushed her to the pavement. The tram shuddered past, its bell clanging once more.

  “Mrs Hudson,” the girl said. “Are you all right?”

  A sweet young face, a brunette. A face she knew.

  “It’s me, Rachel,” she said.

  The girl she’d saved. The girl who’d lost everything to Time, lost her life, her parents. The girl who’d fought to correct time and get her life back. Yes, she remembered her now.

  “Rachel,” Mrs Hudson said. “How lovely to see you.”

  “I heard you call,” Rachel said. “I heard you call for help, so I came.”

  “I don’t remember,” the old lady said.

  Rachel linked her arm in hers and walked with her to the glass doors of New Street Station. “Come on. We need to move quickly.”

  They pushed through to the warmth of the crowded concourse. She was back home. She was safe. “Where are we going, my dear?”

  “Something has happened,” Rachel said. “Something awful. To do with the station.”

  Mrs Hudson stopped and looked
all around at the Grand Central concourse with its glittering Christmas lights. “This station?”

  “No. Kings Heath station. Come on. I’ll explain it on the way. As much as I can. It’s the station at the end of time.”

  She let the young girl guide her through the crowd, past the brass band playing Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, all dressed in their Dickensian costumes. There was fear in the young girl’s voice, but it was a kind face, and for the moment, Mrs Hudson was happy that she was home and someone needed her again.

  — Epilogue —

  WHEN CHARLES DICKENS awoke, it was so dark, that looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his hotel room. The chimes of a distant church struck two quarters. He fumbled for his pocket watch and squinted in the dark. A half to seven.

  Ghosts, he thought. All three gone like ghosts.

  A knocking at the door from the adjoining chamber.

  “Charles. It’s time.”

  “Yes, Forster. Yes.”

  He leapt off the bed. He’d fallen on it fully dressed last night. A letter in his hand, from his wife, handed to him when he’d returned to the hotel at midnight. He’d only half read it. He stuffed it in his jacket pocket and scrambled for his things, shoving them all into his travelling case.

  He was out and down to the hotel reception in moments, where Forster was fussing over a coach he’d ordered.

  “I’m not walking to the station,” Forster said. “No fear.”

  Charles shrugged. It was all the same to him. Still surly with sleep, he rushed up the red carpet of the pergola, cringing against the cold, dark morning, and leapt into the carriage.

  They said nothing as the rusty old chariot with post-horses rattled down New Street and through the warren of gloomy streets to the distant station at Curzon Street. If only they’d build one in the centre of town.

  Once they’d arrived, Forster rushed off to get a porter to take the cases to their carriage. “And The Times,” he said. “I must get The Times for the journey.”

  Charles lingered on the steps of the building, the Roman temple, and looked all about. That old beggar woman he’d passed when he’d arrived yesterday. He’d hoped to see her again. Give her something. He chided himself. The chance to be charitable was ever a momentary thing. Pass it by and the chance was gone.