by Andy Conway
Other carriages came and emptied out travellers and their luggage, all eager to be off to join their loved ones. It was Christmas morn, but cold and dark still. He trudged up the stone steps and went to go through the giant open doors when he glanced to his side.
Behind one of the great pillars, a bundle of rags, from which a hand protruded, a palm held out in supplication.
He instinctively patted his pockets to show he had nothing and was chastened by the telltale chink of coins.
It was the same beggar lady he’d passed yesterday. He went to her and crouched before her. She looked up from under her ragged hood. A dirty, grimy, creased face but with kind eyes.
“Good morning, lady,” he said. “I’m glad I found you. Only I noticed you yesterday and wondered if you are all right.”
Stupid. Of course she wasn’t all right. She was sleeping in front of a railway station.
“Yes, sir,” she croaked. “I’m fine, thank you.”
“Why are you here like this?” he asked. “Why do you have no home?”
“My husband beat me,” she said.
“Are there no...” He stopped himself. The word workhouse caught in his throat. “Is there no provision for you?”
“The Poor Law doesn’t provide,” she said. “There is nothing for it.”
A surge of anger balled in his throat. Sir Robert Peel and his blasted Tory government. A parliament of braying Swingefords. They had brought this about as surely as if Peel himself had kicked this woman onto the street.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Mary,” she said.
An icicle through his heart. Mary. Like his own little girl. Why was this Mary sleeping on the streets with nothing? Would that ever happen to his own Mary?
“Well, Mary, I’d like to give you something to ease the burden at this time of year.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out his purse. A few coins. Not enough to change a life, but enough to change this day. He emptied it out in her hand. “Here. It’s all I have.”
“Thank you,” she said. “God bless you, sir.”
He leant in and kissed her cheek and walked off through the great doors and the palatial ticket office, and through to the platform. He found tears stinging his face. He wiped them away, angry. No, ashamed. There would be more of this, so much more of this with this blasted government of unfeeling monsters. The country was done for.
He marched up the platform, wiping his eyes, swallowing the knot in his throat, and found Forster packing the cases into a carriage.
“You all right, Charles?”
“Blasted smoke in my eyes,” he said, skipping into the carriage and slumping into a springy seat.
“We’ll have this one to ourselves,” said Forster. “Not many travelling this Christmas morn.”
Forster was babbling, trying to fill the uneasy silence between them. There would be almost six hours of this.
Charles slumped against the window and gazed through clouds of steam while the train sat still and doors slammed.
Forster opened The Times and hid behind it; an effective screen from his churlish companion.
Ghosts, Charles thought. All three gone like ghosts.
What wonders there were in the world. He must write of them. But how to make his readers believe something as fantastical as the things he’d seen last night? It was impossible. He would be laughed at. It would be the end.
Perhaps he could turn Martin Chuzzlewit in the direction of magic, the supernatural. No, that wouldn’t do. The story had its own impetus now, driving itself where it wanted to go. He liked to think he was steering the vehicle, and most people thought he was, but he was not the engine driver. The locomotive of the novel went where it would without his intervention. He was merely a passenger in a first-class seat. He had merely bought a ticket.
Another story. Something he might tackle when this gargantuan novel, this long journey was over.
The Christmas story.
He’d heard himself reading the final words, which he only half remembered over the surreal, haunting, terrifying moment of seeing his future self.
A Christmas story.
A mean old miser is visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve who show him the past, the present and the future.
He would put them all in it. Belle and Fred. Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim. Though he’d most likely have to sweeten the boy up a little. Mr Fezzwig would certainly be in it. Such a character. But not the Pike ruffian; far too mean and violent for a Christmas tale. Though that story of old Jacob Marley coming back from the dead. That was gold. Well worth the money he’d paid to secure it, whatever Forster thought.
It was all before him and he was eager to make a start.
He counted off the months.
Yes. Chuzzlewit wouldn’t be finished until July 1844, then compiled into a single volume. He couldn’t wait that long. No, it would have to be written for next Christmas. Perhaps he could take a break from Chuzzlewit around October. And yes, release a Christmas book in time for Christmas. It would have to be on the short side, a novella, perhaps.
He tucked the thought away. Let it germinate until October while he worked on Chuzzlewit. All the more likelihood that this Christmas story would come fully formed when he was ready to bring it to the forefront of his mind, his unconscious mind having worked on it all this time.
But he would not write a word until he had a title. He never could. What would it be called?
A Christmas Present.
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
The Ghosts of Christmas Past.
No, none of those were right. The title was just out of reach, frustratingly at the edge of his consciousness.
A tune carried on the wind over the hiss of steam and the dull roar of seething engines. Someone singing a Christmas carol.
No, the title wouldn’t come. He put the thought away. It would come to him at some later time.
Finally, there was a whistle. The train shuddered into life, creaked and groaned, a colossus waking, and it pulled away from Curzon Street and from Birmingham.
He settled into the journey and relaxed into the pleasant hum of the rails. The charm of transit. He dug in his jacket pocket and pulled out the letter from Catherine.
His wife’s neat handwriting, the sight of which instantly brought him back home. He had only been gone a day and she longed for him to return. And yes, it had felt like a lifetime to him too. The turkey had arrived, she wrote. The turkey that his printers in London, Bradley & Evans, sent every year. They were rather capital fellows to do that. Of course, it was a gift to maintain his patronage, but they were good fellows all the same and it brought cheer to his heart and to his family, and that was the main thing.
We shall have a dinner, she’d written. A very big dinner. And guests. A party with our dearest friends. Let the house be full of warmth and love.
He folded the letter and tucked it away and felt that knot in his throat again.
Fred and Belle. Such a fire of love blazing between them. It was a thing to see. He and Catherine had not been so ardent, but he loved her and was eager now to be with her and the four children. Christmas was a time for home and family and above all else, love.
He’d come here on Christmas Eve when he really should have been with his wife and children. Much as he felt the need to launch himself abroad, to seek other things, this last day had reminded him that he only truly found himself with home and fireside.
Home! Home, home, home.
“Forster,” he said.
Forster popped his head from behind the barricade of The Times. “What’s that, Charles?”
“My darling Catherine has written me—”
“Oh, that’s nice. Gone for only a day and she writes.”
“Yes. Yes it is.”
“You’re a very lucky man.”
“I am. I know it. She says we’re having a Christmas party this afternoon. Would you come?”
“Me? Come?”
�
�Yes. A party with our dearest friends, she says.”
Forster smiled and puffed his chest out. “Why, I’d be honoured to spend Christmas Day with you and your charming wife, Charles. And your lovely children and your friends.”
“Excellent,” Charles said. “It’ll be a merry Christmas.”
“God bless us,” said Forster. “Every one.”
The train rumbled out of the gloomy city and the glow of dawn cast a rosy hue over fields of white snow.
The man who had come here yesterday had failed in his mission. But that man was a different man now, a changed man who had succeeded in so many other things. He’d brought together two young lovers and seen them home safely to a new life. He’d helped to rescue a boy from a life of crime, performed on the stage and given delight to hundreds of poor children. There really was nothing so rewarding as a child’s smile. He’d seen his future self, assured his future success, but more importantly seen that man he was to be giving the joy of the season to thousands, urging them to keep Christmas in their hearts all the year round.
He had not a penny on him and felt the richest man in the world.
Also in the Touchstone saga
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The dark anti-heroine of the bestselling time travel saga gets her own personal origin story in this novella that reveals how she first found her touchstone.
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Acknowledgements
THE GREATEST THANKS go to David Wake, who acted as editor while I wrote this book to a Christmas deadline that resembled Dickens’ own insane schedule when delivering his Christmas Carol on the same day — December 19th — 176 years ago. David edited this book on the fly, chapter by chapter, when neither of us knew where it was going, and it is a much better book for his efforts.
The usual thanks go to my amazing launch team — Paul Gray, Lee Sharp, Audrey Finta, Roger Chadburn, David Cline, Marie McCraney and Helena George — who couldn’t read an advance copy but who have helped greatly with previous Touchstone books and will always be dear to me.
THERE ARE SEVERAL IMPORTANT books and blogs whose historical research on Birmingham’s past I have drawn on here.
The delightful book, Maps & Sketches from Georgian & Early Victorian Birmingham (in the brilliantly named Armchair Time Traveller Guide series), by Paul Leslie Line and Adrian Baggett, with a foreword by William Dargue, provided an invaluable visual reference for the Birmingham of 1842. (2013, Mapseeker Archive Publishing Ltd)
William Dargue’s blog, A History of Birmingham Places & Placenames from A to Y, was useful in cataloguing many of the lost streets of the ‘Froggery’, replaced by New Street Station.
Another wonderful blog is that of Mapping Birmingham, Birmingham in the Long Eighteenth Century (mostly). Jen Dixon’s research into the history of manufacturing and in particular the culture of ‘toy’ making proved invaluable in the writing of this novel.
My main reference on the life of Charles Dickens was Peter Ackroyd’s gargantuan biography, Dickens (Minerva, 1991).
Historical Notes
DEAR BOZ. Dickens’ first published writings were written under the pen-name ‘Boz’ — a series of journalistic sketches published in various newspapers and periodicals between 1833 and 1836.
Dickens in Birmingham. Although Manchester tries to claim the inspiration for A Christmas Carol (erroneously, as the ragged school Dickens visited in 1843 was in London, not Manchester, and he merely visited a relative in Ardwick while attending a talk in Manchester), my fantasy of a Birmingham connection does hold some water. Dickens’ first ever public readings of A Christmas Carol were at Birmingham Town Hall on the nights of 27th, 29th & 30th December, 1853. On the last night all seats except the side galleries were sold at a fee of sixpence ‘to enable the working man and woman to gain admittance.’ Before that, Dickens’ first public engagement in Birmingham was on Feb. 28th 1844, when he presided over a conversazione at the Town Hall in aid of the Polytechnic Society. He then became president of the Birmingham & Midland Institute in 1869. This association with Birmingham had begun much earlier when he gave a talk to the Society of Artists in 1852.
But could it be that Charles Dickens had visited Birmingham before writing A Christmas Carol? A passage from The Pickwick Papers suggests very much that he could. In Chapter 50, Pickwick goes to visit Mr Winkle who lives on a Canal Wharf in Birmingham, and Dickens gives a vivid description of ‘the great working town of Birmingham’ with its streets thronged with working people, the hum of labour resounding from every house, the whirl of wheels and noise of machinery, fires blazing in the great works and factories: the din of hammers, the rushing of steam, and the dead heavy clanking of engines, was the harsh music which arose from every quarter.
What happened in Cornwall... Dickens, John Forster and Daniel Maclise had recently had a ‘bachelor’ excursion to Cornwall. There is no indication that anything untoward happened on this bachelor getaway, but later, Dickens did behave inappropriately on a holiday in Broadstairs when he ran off with Eleanor Christian, the young fiancée of his solicitor’s best friend, grabbing her and running with her into the sea. He declared they were both to drown there in the ‘sad sea waves’. She got free but afterwards kept her distance. I have here imagined something similar might have happened in Cornwall. The men returned to London on 4 November, 1842.
Martin Chuzzlewit. The MS of Chuzzlewit went to the publishers on December 18th, 1842, and was first published on New Year’s Eve, so at this point in the story, Dickens is between submission and publication and optimistic about his new serialisation.
Dickens as miser. The Dickens of the opening pages of this novel is perhaps a surprisingly curmudgeonly figure — closer to Scrooge than, say, David Copperfield — but at this precise juncture of his life, he was a young man whose mission had failed. He had taught the world to reach out to the poor in Oliver Twist, but that success had passed and his recent ventures had failed (Barnaby Rudge was a flop and the periodical via which Dickens published the work, Master Humphrey’s Clock, had folded). He was also trapped in a marriage that he was already regarding as a mistake. Much has been written about his grief over the death of Mary Hogarth, his sister-in-law, but it is clear, to me at least, that he was really in love with his wife’s sister and her tragically young death had affected him profoundly. He mourned her like he would mourn a lover.
A Christmas Carol was published on 12 December 1843 and Dickens first thought of it seemingly in October that year, which makes this fantasy, of course, precisely that.
The Theatre Royal, New Street, was founded in 1774. Originally the New Street Theatre, it gained its Royal appellation following the 1779 rebuild featured ‘a ballroom which stood at the front of the building, and where refreshments would be served. There were also The Shakespeare Rooms, for alcoholic drinks, and a coffee house, which were both run by Mr. Wilday.’
It was damaged by fire twice, in 1793 and in 1820, and was eventually demolished in 1956. It was located at the top end of New Street, roughly where the Woolworths building sat (which features in the Touchstone novel Fade to Grey).
Ebenezer Swingeford is a fictional character and an entirely imaginary prototype for Ebenezer Scrooge. I have
borrowed parts of his name from Samuel Wilson Warneford, the English cleric and ‘philanthropist’ who was instrumental in founding the Birmingham Royal Medical School, later known as Queen’s College, Birmingham, in 1838. The Queen’s College building still stands opposite the Town Hall and is now a luxury apartment complex. While he was instrumental in bringing higher education to the city of Birmingham, the historian William Whyte says that Warneford was ‘a grasping, avaricious, bigoted reactionary.’
Tories. Though vehemently opposed to the new Tory government, I have portrayed here Dickens as a man who, in despair at the political situation and his own financial dire straits, is succumbing to a lack of feeling. It is not hard to imagine him joining the cynics and the Tories in saying damn the poor at this stage of his life, due entirely to his primal fear of sinking back into poverty.
New Royal Hotel. Charles Dickens often stayed at the Old Royal Hotel on Temple Row, facing St Philip’s cathedral, but in this imaginary clandestine visit to Birmingham I have chosen to lodge him in the New Royal Hotel on New Street, due to its convenient proximity to the Theatre Royal.
Half farthing. The British half farthing was one eighth of a penny, and in 1842 had only just been declared legal tender in the United Kingdom. It had previously been used only in Ceylon. There was much cynicism of the need for such a coin in Britain, but its purchasing power was not as small as middle-class writers of the day imagined. The real price value of a half farthing in 2019 prices is approximately five pence or a nickel. (Real Price is measured as the relative cost of a bundle of goods and services such as food, shelter, clothing, that an average household would buy.)
The Dungeon. Also called ‘the Prison’, this building was situated on the corner of Peck Lane and Pinfold Street, therefore opposite the Connexion Chapel. Thomas Underwood’s Buildings of Birmingham, Volume One 1866 describes it as ‘the site of the Gaol — the materials of which were sold 28th November, 1806, for £250 — was very near the site where the Madras School subsequently stood. The prison-like look of the place made it famous in local memory...’ It is quite possible, judging from the 1839 map of Birmingham, that the Dungeon was demolished by the time of this story, but I have gone with it to provide a major presence for the sake of my fiction.