by CP Ward
Bonnie wandered the aisles, mouth agape, too stunned to voice her thoughts. Yet another of Christmas Land’s neglected miracles, it was a tourist attraction in its own right, something that could be brought up to shining perfection with a bit of care and a few hours with a stepladder and a scrubbing brush.
And then, as she walked past a stand of cacti to find herself faced with the greenhouse’s main attraction, she thought her jaw might hit the floor.
Standing in front of her beneath the raised central atrium, was a cacao tree. Large coco pods hung from bent branches, desperate to be picked. Bonnie reached out and gave one a tentative prod, before noticing the faded sign sticking out of the ground by the tree’s foot.
As used in Mervin’s Marshmallow Café!
So, it wasn’t just the marshmallows that Mervin used natural, local ingredients for. He did the same for his hot chocolate. And if this was his tree, it made sense that he had looked after the entire bio-dome.
Bonnie sat down on a rickety wooden bench and gave a long sigh. Unable to resist a tired smile, she looked up at the cacao tree, hung heavy with pods, and wondered how she could turn one of those lumpy diamond-shaped pods into a steaming cup of hot chocolate.
22
Letters
Debbie was sitting on the terrace outside the pub, drinking a pint of stout and playing with her phone. As Bonnie took a seat opposite and sat down, Debbie looked up, a worried expression on her face.
‘Phone’s playing up,’ she said. ‘Might have to do a text run.’
‘A what?’
‘A run to some high ground, send some messages. It was working okay yesterday, after Shaun climbed up the phone mast and cut away the ivy, but it’s on the blink now.’
‘What happened?’
‘I have some issues,’ Debbie said.
Bonnie leaned forward, resting her chin on the backs of her hands. ‘Tell Auntie Bonnie.’
Debbie gave a long, dramatic sigh. ‘Like, basically, I’ve got Mitchell really wanting me to go back to Bristol, but I’m not sure I can go back to him right now. I need some time to myself.’
‘Um, why?’
Debbie shook her head. ‘I’ve broken up with Shaun,’ she said.
‘Already? You were with him, what, six hours?’
‘Fourteen. Turned out he thought I was some singer from some metal band he liked, which, you know, is pretty flattering. When he found out I wasn’t, he went kind of cold.’ She shrugged. ‘So I ended it.’
‘Just like that?’
‘I can’t live up to being someone I’m not.’ She took a long swallow of her drink. ‘So, how was your day?’
Bonnie smiled. ‘I’ve been doing my best to live up to being someone I’m not,’ she said.
Debbie nodded, completely missing the irony. ‘And how’s it working out?’
‘To be honest, it’s been a breath of fresh air. This time last week I was all about running coupons for three-for-two on baked beans or apologising for selling out of PG Tips, but this week it’s pulling up plants in marshes and trying to figure out how to turn a large, brown fruit into hot chocolate.’
Debbie leaned forward, narrowing her eyes. ‘Morrico sold out of PG Tips?’
Bonnie shrugged. ‘There’s a guy who comes in whose daughter lives in Japan. He sends her out bulk loads. One day last month he bought nine boxes. I mean, we were only sold out for about five minutes, but you know. That’s beside the point, though. I found a cacao tree.’
‘What, like a real one?’
‘Are there other kinds?’ When Debbie just shrugged, Bonnie said, ‘I think it belonged to Mervin. This place is crazier than I could ever have imagined.’
‘Just imagine what it would be like if it was all fixed up.’
Bonnie sighed. ‘That’s the problem. That’s all I can imagine right now. I can’t see anything else. It’s like my whole past never existed and I was born the day we arrived here. All my old life feels like a bad dream and I’ve just woken up into what should actually be the dream. I have no idea what’s going on.’
‘Like a hall of mirrors?’
‘What?’
‘Like, you’re seeing a whole bunch of yourself and you don’t know which is the real one, so you’re going kind of crazy?’
‘Um, I suppose.’
Debbie grinned. ‘So, what are you going to do?’
‘Figure out how to make homemade hot chocolate, I suppose. Literally homemade.’
‘That’s awesome. Oh, and by the way, Mitchell said Barry’s convinced his fiancée to have their wedding at Christmas Land. First week of December. Apparently Barry’s totally loaded so it’s going to be about a hundred people. At least.’
‘Wow.’
‘So, yeah. Oh, and my mum says it’s totally okay for me to work for you. As long as you pay me and everything, and that I declare it so the family doesn’t get blacklisted by social services.’
Bonnie took a deep breath. It felt like the deepest one she’d ever taken. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s get a shift on. Marshmallows don’t make themselves.’
Debbie’s plan to ascend the viewing tower in order to send a few text messages was thwarted by measure of it being closed, so she headed off to catch a lunchtime train into Quimbeck, leaving Bonnie to head back to the café alone.
Feeling overawed by the thought of opening the café, Bonnie decided now was the time to start getting to know her uncle a little better. Brewing a large pot of coffee, she took a steaming cup and carried it up the ladder to his office grotto.
It was as she had left it, piled high with papers, documents and letters. Bonnie took a seat and started to go through them one by one.
To her initial surprise, the café had been in rude health. Profit sheets and bank statements—the balance of which now passed to Bonnie, according to the lawyers’ letter—showed a regular, consistent profit. However, unearthing several from previous years, she found that, while the café still did okay, it had been in gradual decline, probably due to the general malaise of the whole park.
Below the bank and tax documents, which she happily pushed aside, Bonnie found the document she had known she would find somewhere, but had been dreading: the closure letter.
Dear Leaseholder (“Merv” was scribbled alongside it),
It is with great regret that I write to inform you that Christmas Land will cease operation in the January following the date of this letter, unless by some stroke of luck its performance drastically increases. With almost all properties within the park owned by leaseholders such as yourself, there is no more money for investment, and sadly, a project begun fifty years ago will be put to rest. The magical lights of Christmas Land will go out for good.
It is with great regret that I have to write and send this letter. My heart is broken by doing so, but like everything in life, all good things come to an end, and Christmas Land is no exception. We should be proud of our history, of what we have achieved, of the magic we have shared. Unfortunately, we live in a world without magic, where no one looks further than their own hands, and beauty and joy are no longer truly appreciated. Christmas Land is a thing of the past, a thing belonging to a different generation which understood a different way of life.
So, the park that was my creation and my dream will close. Always the dreamer, I will allow you to continue trying to convince me otherwise up until the day the gates close for the last time.
I wish you all the best.
Yours, with great faith and regret,
S.N.
Bonnie frowned at the letter. Who on earth was S.N.? She had heard him—or her, maybe; Bonnie had no clue—referred to only as the Boss, but was that all anyone knew? The scribbed “Merv” at the top suggested her Uncle had been on friendly terms with their mysterious overlord, so perhaps Gene, or other older members of the park had been, too. It was worth asking, in case she could track the mysterious person down and appeal to them face to face.
She took a sip of her coffee, shook her head,
and then began to go through the pile of correspondence she found beneath.
Half an hour later, she was still shaking her head, this time in disbelief, as she stared at the couple of dozen letters she had spread out on the table before her.
She also wore a smile. While she wouldn’t quite say she felt jubilant, she felt very, very close.
About twenty-five people had gathered in the Mountain Breeze café. June and Niall were delivering plates of cookies and pitchers of fresh coffee to each table as Bonnie and Debbie entered. Bonnie immediately recognised several people, including Jason the reindeer handler, the three elves, Gene, in his woodland gear sitting with one huge, booted leg hooked over the other as he sucked on an empty pipe, and an old lady dressed rather like an Eskimo, whom Bonnie took to be Belinda.
Brendon came over to meet her, then introduced her to those people she hadn’t yet met. Several were staff, others were leaseholders of various shops, restaurants, and attractions.
‘Right, I think everyone who said they’d come is here,’ Brendon said, leading Bonnie to a stool next to the café counter. ‘Would you like me to say something first?’
Bonnie glanced across at Debbie, who had sat down next to Shaun and was passing him several CDs, whispering a few comments about each one. She smiled.
‘No, I’ll do it,’ she said. Then, with her heart beating in her chest so loud she almost felt the need to shout, she clapped her hands together. ‘Welcome, everyone,’ she said. ‘My name is Bonnie Green, as you probably know, since I just spoke with most of you. I’m Mervin Green’s niece, and the beneficiary of his will.’
A few people murmured to their neighbours. Bonnie waited a few seconds before continuing.
‘His will asked me to take over the café, but it was something I was reluctant about. You see, I’m not exactly one for rushing off on sudden adventures. In fact, my whole life has been quite the opposite. I’ve always quite avoided them, and well, in the end it got me nowhere. I live in a small semi-detached house in Weston super Mare, my grown up children don’t speak to me, and I work in a supermarket.’
Murmurs passed through the crowd. Someone asked, ‘Why did you call us to this meeting?’
‘Well, I’m not familiar with how you do things,’ Bonnie said. ‘And I’ve seen the letter threatening to close the park in January—’
Several people stood up. Belinda, the diminutive Eskimo-dressed lady, shouted, ‘It always gets better at Christmas. Always has done. Load of fuss over nothing. The park’s going nowhere.’
‘It sounds serious to me,’ Bonnie said.
‘Won’t close,’ shouted another older man, one Bonnie had been introduced to as Richard, owner of Russian Steppe Donuts and Milkshakes, a small café tucked into the restaurant forum area. ‘We’ve been threatened before. Nothing happened. We had that letter three years ago, who remembers that?’
Brendon stood up. ‘That was just a warning,’ he said. ‘That things needed to improve. We got a lot of snow that year, so tickets sold better. This is different.’
‘Are you sure about that? And who are you, anyway,’ Richard said, waving a hand at Bonnie, ‘To start telling us what to do?’
Before Bonnie could reply, Gene stood up. At the sound of his huge suit shifting and his boots scraping on the floor, all other sound seemed to fade, until there was only the movement of Father Christmas as he made his way to the front.
Gene turned to face them, his head slowly moving back and forth until he had met every pair of eyes in the room. ‘You want to know who this lady is? Well, I’ll tell you.’ He paused to wait for the whispers to stop. ‘This lady here is customer zero.’
More murmurs. Gene nodded as he pulled something out of his pocket and held it up. A black and white photograph of three men, with an infant girl held in the arms of one.
‘Three years old, she would have been,’ Gene said, giving Bonnie an affectionate glance. ‘That’s me there, beside her dad, and that’s Merv on the other side. The day the park opened. She was our test subject.’ He glanced at Bonnie. ‘I bet you barely remember it, do you?’
Bonnie wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. ‘I had dreams … and my dad used to talk about it as though it was a place we had once gone. And he said we’d go there again one day, but then he died….’
‘You loved every second of it,’ Gene said. ‘Every ride, every stall, every character. I’ve never seen eyes so full of wonder. I knew then that the park would be a success, but that was a long time ago. We haven’t moved with the times. We’ve let things go stale, let rides rust up and close down. People have moved out, locking up their shops and leaving. Sure, we’ve always had a sprinkling of customers, but fewer and fewer ever come back. What happened to the regulars we had twenty, thirty years ago? Every year we’d see the same faces, like old friends. And now….’ He shook his head. ‘How could we have let it get like this?’
‘So what do we do?’ called Jason.
Bonnie stepped forward. She reached into a bag and pulled out the bundle of letters she had found on Mervin’s desk.
‘My uncle had a plan,’ she said. ‘He had always kept in contact with his regular customers, and in his hour of need he had called them in, asking for their specialist help. Engineers to fix the rides, plumbers, builders, and electricians to repair the chalets, businessmen to figure out an action plan, lawyers to keep the park financed, even gardeners and stone masons to tidy up the flowerbeds and walkways. Painters, designers, mechanics … he had written letters to them all … but he died before he got a chance to mail them.’
Another murmur passed through the crowd. Someone asked, ‘Are you going to send them?’
Bonnie turned the nearest one round. ‘My friend picked up a bunch of stamps from Quim this afternoon. They’re all ready to go. There’s a mailbox by the station I’ll be dropping them in tomorrow morning. Now, does anyone have any other ideas?’
Niall’s hand shot up. ‘We could create a mascot,’ he said. Several people laughed, but others, coming around to the idea, nodded. ‘How about a cutesy reindeer?’
Brendon nodded. ‘It might work. Or how about we make character versions of all of us?’
The discussion moved back and forth. Someone else suggested creating golden tickets, special invites sent out to friends of friends, or even to people in the public sector who might help raise the profile of the park.
Debbie lifted her hand. ‘You want to make this place sound better than it is?’ she said. ‘You have a customer limit anyway due to the environmental setting, so play up to it. Make it sound exclusive, like you’re lucky because you’re one in a thousand or whatever—’
‘The limit is two thousand, five hundred at a time,’ Brendon said.
‘You don’t tell them that,’ Debbie said. ‘If they want to go around and count, that’s up to them. And create a waiting list. Give them something to look forward to. In three years time, we’re going to Christmas Land! And damn well make it worth it when they arrive.’
The feeling in the room had shifted. Bonnie sensed a newfound sense of positivity, of hope. ‘We start tomorrow,’ she said. ‘We’ll begin by cleaning and tidying up the park. We can do this, I know we can.’
As Brendon stepped up to formally end the meeting, he turned to Bonnie. ‘I’d just like to say, on behalf of everyone here, welcome to the Christmas Land family.’
Bonnie smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I think I’m going to enjoy it.’
Part II
A Magical Awakening
23
Golden Tickets
‘Bonnie! Are you sure you’re safe up there?’
Bonnie, hanging on with one hand to a branch as she reached out with the other to grab a cacao pod hanging out over the floor some five metres below, glanced down at Debbie, bizarrely wearing a reindeer-designed jumper under her trench-coat. A strand of red and white streamer wound its way through her otherwise black braids: it was as far as she would go by way of concession.
‘I�
��m fine,’ Bonnie said, even as one foot slipped from the crux of the tree and briefly scrabbled in open air. ‘Never felt better. I’ll just get this last one—’
She stretched, her fingers closing over the pod. With a twist it came loose.
‘Got it.’
‘Now get down.’
‘I’m coming.’
A couple of minutes later, Bonnie stood beside Debbie on the floor below the atrium. The sun streamed through windows cleaned and polished over the last couple of weeks. Already newly planted flowers and bushes were beginning to show signs of taking to their new homes. Plans were in place to assign a new head botanist and design a walking tour. Of course, the Pohutukawa tree which stood at one end of the atrium, known as the New Zealand Christmas tree because of its beautiful red hue, would be one of the main attractions. After a photo opportunity, customers would be directed to Mervin’s Marshmallow Café for a free hot chocolate made with homegrown cacao.
Outside, a group of stonemasons were at work repairing the cobbled walkway that lead from the main circular path down to the greenhouse. Bonnie gave them a wave and invited them in for a drink when they were finished.
‘So, how many came?’ Debbie asked. ‘Out of all those letters you sent?’
Bonnie smiled. ‘Almost all of them. Uncle Mervin had made some friends over the years, it seems.’
They passed a shop called Bad Taste Christmas Goods. A young boy was outside, polishing the windows, while through an open door, an older couple were arranging goods on shelves. Debbie gave her jumper a sheepish pat.