A Little, Aloud

by Angela Macmillan

  I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clockwork mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o’-war, following the Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

  Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.

  ‘I bet people will think there’s been hippos.’

  ‘What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?’

  ‘I’d go like this, bang! I’d throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I’d tickle him under the ear and he’d wag his tail.’

  ‘What would you do if you saw two hippos?’

  Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr Daniel’s house.

  ‘Let’s post Mr Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box.’

  ‘Let’s write things in the snow.’

  ‘Let’s write, “Mr Daniel looks like a spaniel” all over his lawn.’

  Or we walked on the white shore. ‘Can the fishes see it’s snowing?’

  The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travellers lost on the north hills, and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying ‘Excelsior’. We returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly; and the ice cake loomed in the centre of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with rum, because it was only once a year.

  Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn’t the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. ‘What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?’

  ‘No,’ Jack said, ‘Good King Wenceslas. I’ll count three.’ One, two, three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King Wenceslas looked out On the Feast of Stephen . . . And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.

  ‘Perhaps it was a ghost,’ Jim said.

  ‘Perhaps it was trolls,’ Dan said, who was always reading.

  ‘Let’s go in and see if there’s any jelly left,’ Jack said. And we did that.

  Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang ‘Cherry Ripe’, and another uncle sang ‘Drake’s Drum’. It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird’s Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-coloured snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

  THE OXEN

  Thomas Hardy

  Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

  ‘Now they are all on their knees,’

  An elder said as we sat in a flock

  By the embers in hearthside ease.

  We pictured the meek mild creatures where

  They dwelt in their strawy pen,

  Nor did it occur to one of us there

  To doubt they were kneeling then.

  So fair a fancy few would weave

  In these years! Yet, I feel,

  If someone said on Christmas Eve,

  ‘Come; see the oxen kneel,

  ‘In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

  Our childhood used to know,’

  I should go with him in the gloom,

  Hoping it might be so.

  READING NOTES

  ‘This story is full of the smell and feel of my childhood Christmases,’ said one elderly man. There is so much here to talk about: snow; small boys making nuisances of themselves; the ordinary postman, who seems extraordinary compared to today’s postal service. Games; dreadful hand-knitted presents; Christmas dinner; jelly; relatives; carol singing then and now and finally there is the pure delight and pleasure of the language. As someone said, ‘I have read this before but it is only when I hear it read out loud that it truly comes to life.’

  Another man in the group thought the poem reminded him of believing in Father Christmas: ‘You begin to realise it is all made up, but it does not stop you hoping that perhaps it is true, like the story of the animals kneeling.’ People often talk about the atmosphere that both story and poem create; the meaning of the final line; and whether our fondest memories are true or coloured by nostalgia and how we would like things to have been.

  Read On

  The aim of this section is to offer information, suggestions and enthusiasm for further stories, extracts and poems to read aloud – and where to find them.

  Fleur Adcock (1934–)

  Other poems: ‘Things’, ‘For Andrew’. See: Selected Poems (OUP, 1983), Dragon Talk (Bloodaxe, 2010).

  A. J. Alan (1883–1941)

  His work is out of print now but try amazon.co.uk or abe.co.uk. for used copies. For further ghost stories try M. R. James, published by Penguin, OUP, Wordsworth and BBC Audio.

  Louisa M. Alcott (1832–88)

  Also try: Chapter 8, Little Women – in a fit of pique at not being allowed to go to the theatre, Amy burns the book Jo has been writing.

  Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953)

  Also try: ‘Matilda’, ‘Tarantella’. See: Cautionary Tales for Children (Harcourt Brace, 2002).

  Laurence Binyon (1869–1943)

  Also try: ‘For the Fallen’.

  Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)

  Also try: ‘
The Visitor’, ‘Maria’, ‘Summer Night’. See: Collected Stories (Vintage Classics, 1999).

  Charlotte Brontë (1816–55)

  Also try: Chapter 26, Jane Eyre – the wedding day of Jane and Edward Rochester.

  Christy Brown (1932–81)

  Also try: Christy Brown’s autobiographical novel Down All the Days (Minerva, 1994).

  George Mackay Brown (1921–96)

  Also try: Winter Tales (Polygon, 2006), The Sun’s Net (Polygon, 2010).

  Robert Burns (1759–96)

  Also try: ‘To a Mouse’, ‘John Anderson, My Jo’. Collections of Burns’ poems and songs are published by Canongate, Wordsworth, and on audio CD by HarperCollins.

  Morley Callaghan (1903–90)

  Morley Callaghan is not in print in the UK except for individual stories in anthologies. See: Oxford Book of Short Stories (OUP, 1981), Best Canadian Short Stories (Seal Books, Toronto).

  Bruce Chatwin (1940–89)

  Also try: Chatwin’s account of his travels in South America, In Patagonia (Vintage Classics, 1999).

  Anton Chekhov (1860–1904)

  Also try: ‘The Lottery Ticket’, ‘The Lady With the Little Dog’, ‘The Student’. See: Penguin, OUP, Vintage Classics and Wordsworth who all have collections of Chekhov stories in print.

  Kate Chopin (1850–1904)

  Also try: ‘Désirée’s Baby’, set in Louisiana, about a woman who marries a slave owner and who is rejected when it is discovered that their baby is not white. See: The Awakening and Other Stories (Penguin, 2003).

  Gillian Clarke (1937–)

  Also try: ‘Overheard in County Sligo’, ‘Hay-making’. See: Collected Poems (Carcanet, 1997), Recipe for Water (Carcanet, 2009).

  Samuel Daniel (1562–1619)

  Also try: ‘Care-charmer Sleep’, from Delia.

  Walter de la Mare (1873–1956)

  Also try: ‘Fare Well’, ‘Autumn’, ‘Winter Dusk’, ‘The Ghost’. See: Selected Poems (Faber, 2006), and his very dark short stories, such as ‘Seaton’s Aunt’, from Short Stories, Volume One 1895–1926 (Giles de la Mare, 1996).

  Charles Dickens (1812–70)

  Also try: Chapter 1, Great Expectations, in which Pip, visiting his parents’ grave, is surprised and terrified by the appearance of a desperate escaped convict.

  George Eliot (1819–80)

  Also try: Chapter 5, The Mill on the Floss. Young Maggie Tulliver has been left in charge of her beloved brother’s pet rabbits while he is away at school, but she has forgotten about them and they have all died.

  Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965)

  Also try: ‘Morning Has Broken’. See: Kings and Queens, by Eleanor and Herbert Farjeon (Jane Nissen Books, 2002). A poem for each of the British monarchs – brilliant!

  Penny Feeny (1950–)

  Also try: ‘Voiceless’, on summersetreview.org/06summer/voiceless.htm, ‘Falling Out of the Sky’ (Bracket, Comma Press, 2005)

  Gustave Flaubert (1821–80)

  Also try: Flaubert’s epic novel of love and revolution, Sentimental Education. Penguin, OUP and Wordsworth all have editions in print.

  Robert Frost (1874–1963)

  Also try: ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’, ‘Mending Wall’, ‘My November Guest’. See: The Road Not Taken and Other Poems (Dover Thrift, 2009).

  Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

  Also try: ‘The Minute Before Meeting’, ‘I Look into My Glass’, ‘Heredity’. And also Chapter 5, Far From the Madding Crowd – Bathsheba has turned down a marrriage proposal from the farmer, Gabriel Oak. A few days later he suffers another blow.

  Joanne Harris (1964–)

  Also try: ‘Tea With the Birds’, from Jigs and Reels (Black Swan, 2005). See: Chocolat (Black Swan, 2000).

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64)

  Also try: Young Goodman Brown and Other Tales (OUP, 2008), The Scarlet Letter, a novel set in the harsh puritanical community of seventeenth-century Boston, about a young woman, Hester Prynne, who gives birth to an illegitimate baby. Penguin, OUP, Vintage Classics and Wordsworth have editions in print.

  Robert Hayden (1913–80)

  Also try: ‘Frederick Douglass’. See: Collected Poems (W.W. Norton, 1997).

  Seamus Heaney (1939–)

  Also try: ‘A Call’, ‘Postscript’, ‘Mossbawn Sunlight’, ‘Markings’. See: The Spirit Level (Faber, 2001), Seeing Things (Faber, 2002), District and Circle (Faber, 2008).

  O. Henry (1862–1910)

  Also try: ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’, the story of two kidnappers who, having kidnapped a loathsome boy, resort to paying the father to take him back, readbookonline.net/stories/Henry/108.

  Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

  Also try: ‘To Daffodils’, ‘Corinna’s Going A-Maying’, ‘Gather Ye Rosebuds’.

  Thomas Hood (1799–1845)

  Also try: ‘I Remember, I Remember’, ‘November’.

  Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

  Also try: ‘Heaven-Haven’, ‘Binsey Poplars’, ‘Pied Beauty’, ‘I Wake and Feel’. See: Poems and Prose (Penguin, 2008).

  Tove Jansson (1914–2001)

  Also try: The Winter Book (Sort of Books, 2006) – a collection of the best of her short stories.

  Elizabeth Jennings (1926–2001)

  Also try: ‘Fragment for the Dark’, ‘A Little More’, ‘Delay’, ‘For My Sister’. See: Collected Poems (Carcanet, 1986).

  John Keats (1795–1821)

  Also try: ‘Bright Star’, ‘To Autumn’, ‘To Sleep’.

  Brian Keenan (1951–)

  Also try: An Evil Cradling (Vintage, 1993) – his powerful account of his time as a hostage in Beirut.

  Doris Lessing (1919–)

  Also try: ‘Through the Tunnel’. See: The Grass is Singing (Harper Perennial, 2008). In Doris Lessing’s first novel, set in Rhodesia, Mary, who hates the African bush where she lives, is trapped in a loveless marriage to a failing farmer.

  Jack London (1876–1916)

  Also try: the short story ‘To Build a Fire’, and White Fang, a novel about a wild wolf-dog in nineteenth-century Canada, in The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Other Stories (OUP, 2009).

  Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923)

  Also try: ‘The Garden Party’, ‘The Voyage’, ‘Life of Ma Parker’. See: Selected Stories (OUP, 2002).

  Alan Marshall (1902–84)

  Alan Marshall has writen many short stories, mostly set in the Australian bush, but he is not in print in the UK. The story in this book comes from the Oxford Book of Australian Short Stories (OUP, 1994).

  John Masefield (1878–1967)

  Also try: ‘Cargoes’, extracts from ‘Reynard the Fox’. See: Sea Fever: Selected Poems of John Masefield (Fyfield Books, 2005).

  Guy de Maupassant (1850–93)

  Also try: ‘Boule de Suif’, set in the Franco-Prussian War (possibly his most famous story), also ‘Happiness’, which is short, gentle and moving. See: The Best Stories of Guy de Maupassant (Wordsworth, 1997).

  Roger McGough (1937–)

  Also try: ‘Cinders’, ‘Funicular Railway’, ‘Nine to Five’. See: Collected Poems (Penguin, 2004).

  Harold Monro (1879–1932)

  Also try: ‘Living’, ‘At Home’, ‘Dog’.

  Edith Nesbit (1858–1924)

  Also try: The Story of the Treasure Seekers (Puffin, 1995), The New Treasure Seekers (Puffin, 1986). Also, her delightful poem ‘Song’, in which a new mother sings to her baby.

  Saki (1870–1916)

  Also try: ‘Sredni Vashtar’, ‘The Bull’, ‘The Open Window’. See: Collected Stories of Saki (Wordsworth, 1993).

  Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967)

  Also try: ‘The Child at the Window’, ‘The Heart’s Journey’, ‘XI’, ‘Invocation’. See: The War Poems (Faber, 1983), Collected Poems (Faber, 2002).

  Vernon Scannell (1922–2007)

  Also try: ‘Walking Wounded’, ‘No Sense of Direction’, ‘Nettles’. No collections in print.


  Anna Sewell (1820–78)

  Also try: Chapters 7 and 8, Black Beauty. Black Beauty’s stablemate, Ginger, tells his life story.

  William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

  Also try: ‘Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun’, sonnets 18, 29, 30, 73 and others.

  Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)

  Also try: Gulliver’s Travels, which follows the travels and adventures of Lemuel Gulliver. Penguin, OUP, Vintage Classics and Wordsworth all have editions in print.

  Alfred Tennyson (1809–92)

  Also try: ‘Crossing the Bar’, ‘Tears, Idle Tears’, ‘The Lady of Shallott’. Also In Memoriam – Tennyson’s series of poems written after the death of his best friend left him with no more certainty that life had any meaning or purpose.

  Dylan Thomas (1914–53)

  Also try: ‘Holiday Memory’, a short recollection of an August Bank Holiday at the seaside. See: Collected Stories (Phoenix, 2000).

  Edward Thomas (1878–1917)

  Also try: ‘Old Man’, ‘March’, ‘Adlestrop’. See: Collected Poems (Faber, 2004).

  R. S. Thomas (1913–2000)

  Also try: ‘A Blackbird Singing’, ‘The Bright Field’, ‘A Day in Autumn’. See: R. S. Thomas: Everyman Poetry 7 (Phoenix, 1996).

  Mark Twain (1835–1910)

  Also try: The Best Stories of Mark Twain (Modern Library Inc., 2004).

  John Wain (1925–94)

  All John Wain’s fiction is out of print. Try secondhand bookshops, amazon.co.uk and abebooks.co.uk for used copies of his novel Hurry On Down.