Mr. Dickens and His Carol

by Samantha Silva

  The weather grew colder with each passing hour. Eleanor pulled her mantle more closely around her; Dickens clutched at the collar of his coat. They wended their way through rich London and poor, where inside, families gathered around the warm glow of candles and hearths, no doubt telling stories of their own. When they stopped on Waterloo Bridge to watch moonlight skitter down the Thames, there were no words between them, no thoughts at all, only contentment.

  It was nearly midnight when they came full circle to the little square where they’d begun their long perambulation. Their steps slowed in unison, as if resisting return. But Eleanor stopped short of the clock tower where they’d first met. She lowered the hood of her cloak and gazed with wonder into the sky, now a gray wool blanket above them.

  “Snow,” she said, touching her fingers to her cheeks.

  Dickens turned his chin upward, too, to find flakes floating down like feathers on the air. “Snow,” he repeated, taking off his hat and closing his eyes.

  They let it land on their faces and melt on their gloves, tiny crystals of intricate perfection that couldn’t be kept or held, in an instant gone. Dickens thought of his children, and how long they’d waited for a moment like this. He knew Catherine would have read to them by now, listened to their prayers, and tucked them into their beds with kisses on their little foreheads. How gentle her kisses were, like lullabies in themselves. He hated them being so far away, but there was nothing for it but to hope they’d all awake to snow in Scotland, and be happy.

  Eleanor seemed to know what he was thinking, and he soon found himself describing each of his children in great detail, from head to toe, leaving nothing out—not a flamboyance, a freckle, a foible. She listened closely and laughed like a bell, peppering him with questions, wanting to know what made Mamie so quiet, and Katey so sure of herself, and what sort of candy was Frank’s favorite. All the while the snow fell faster and with more determination; the flakes seemed to grow wings and dance in every direction before flitting down to settle in a skiff on the ground around them, beautiful and quiet.

  Finally, Eleanor pulled the velvet hood of her cloak over her snow-sprinkled hair to resume her now-brief journey home. Dickens kept close to her side as they continued on under the watchful gaze of the clock tower’s shining face. She looked back over her shoulder once, as if to bid the little square good night, and wish the clock sweet dreams.

  “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’ll give my regards when I pass back this way.”

  Her eyes flashed under her hood; he thought he caught a soft sideways smile. When they reached her door, they stopped and turned to each other. He pulled the manuscript from his pocket.

  “It would be a great honor to read it to you, Eleanor, if you’d hear it.”

  She turned to the dark window of her lodging house, rubbing her brow with the back of her hand. He sensed her reluctance, not ambivalence at all, but some worry or weariness had overcome her. A shadow fell across her face. How suddenly tired she seemed.

  “Time’s run away from me. Timothy will be fast asleep, and I do want him to hear it.”

  “Then it will wait, of course,” he said, touching the pages to his chin. “I promise you.”

  Eleanor cocked her chin as if to find a better angle to study him. Her eyes shimmered, almost transparent. Even in the darkness, they shone with their own brilliant light. He felt her gaze strongly, knew there were snowflakes on his brows and lashes, in his hair, and imagined he looked like an old man again. But she had only kindness in her eyes. It was as if she saw all the way inside him, the boy he once was, the man he wanted so much to be. It was strange to feel known by someone he’d met only a short time ago, who seemed to grasp his sum and parts. He was a man filled with flaws who meant to have a heart as big as the world.

  “It seems as if the book has rewritten itself,” she said.

  “I think, more, the book has rewritten me.”

  She looked away, her voice fluttering. “That is a happy ending, indeed.”

  “Please,” he said, stepping a little closer, “do not talk of endings.”

  She nodded, blinking away tears.

  “You’ve given me a great gift, Eleanor. And I cannot think what, in return, would mean half as much.”

  A tear pooled at the rim of her eye and fell, tracing a path down the pale rose of her cheek. “Let the book be my Christmas present,” she whispered. “And your friendship with my son.”

  Dickens nodded. “If you cry, I’ll cry, too.”

  “It’s only from happiness,” she said, wiping the tear away.

  He looked out over the white-kissed cobbles as far as he could see, that softened the world around them. “Happiness, yes,” he said, misty-eyed, too.

  She watched his intense gaze, so far away. “What are you thinking of?” she asked.

  “Of India.”

  “India,” she repeated, each syllable a poem.

  “I should miss the snow, I think.” His voice caught. “But, oh, how I would miss my wife and family.”

  Eleanor nodded, a complete understanding between them. “India was a wonderful dream,” she said. “But this is more wonderful.”

  “It is,” he said, almost unable to bear the bittersweetness. “A wonderful life.”

  He knew, as she must have, too, that this was their unspoken good-bye.

  “I shall hear it, Charles. Your story.”

  “Of course you shall. Good and early, before the printers get their hands on it,” he said, lightly tapping the rolled pages three times to the left breast of his coat, where his heart was. They lingered in each other’s gaze, not wanting to break it, if only to take the moment in for all it was. And then, saying nothing more, Eleanor Lovejoy slipped inside.

  Dickens looked up to the window above, waiting for the reassuring glow of a lighted candle. When it came, satisfied that Eleanor was safe in her room with her son, he put his hat on his head, the pages in his pocket, filled his lungs with winter air, and turned to follow his own frosty breath swirling away.

  One, two, three … Ah, the clock tower, proclaiming midnight. It boomed and echoed, a loud, sonorous peal rising above the snow-muffled air and filling his ears. He smiled at the sound of it, stopping at the juncture where Eleanor’s narrow street met the square to look up at the wise old clock face and wait for each bold clang—a declaration, a beginning, an end. The face seemed to look down on him, too.

  Four, five, six … He thought of Eleanor hearing each chime, too. How easy it was to image her forth, leaning over her sleeping son to brush away a lock of brown hair. He could almost hear her humming the carol, and whispering “sweet dreams” in Timothy’s ear. And then, so vivid and clear, he saw her bend over the single burning candle on the table, filling her lungs and cheeks with air. Seven, eight …

  Something made him turn back toward Eleanor’s window to make sure it was true. Nine, ten … The candlelight seemed to flicker and grow, illuminating even the street outside, making magic of snowfall. Eleven … The light shuddered and fell. Eleanor had blown the candle out, just as he’d imagined. In a breath, darkness.

  Twelve … The last chime rang through the square, longer than the others, rattling his ribs. He waited for the echo to finish its round. The circle complete. Then he started back across the square to retrace their shared trodden path in the whiteness before him. A few steps on, he looked down, expecting their footprints side by side in the fresh-fallen snow. There was one set of footprints, the precise length and width of his boot, but one set, not two. Dickens stopped short and stared at the ground. It made no sense. He took off his hat and dropped to his knees, brushing the snow away, searching, as if he’d find her lighter footprints buried somewhere underneath. But where she’d walked beside him just moments ago, there was nothing. Nothing but fine virgin snow.

  He looked up at the clock tower. Its face had gone dim, its stature dwarfed by the night sky. Clouds purled above it, pale gray-and-white marble against deep blue satin, tumbling upward as i
f parting to clear a path to the heavens, lit by the moon, which shot the night through with rays of silver light. And still, gossamer flakes drifting down.

  Dickens snapped his head back toward Eleanor’s street. The snow glistened in front of him, lighting a path to her door. He took off as fast as his slipping feet would allow, back to her lodging house. Bang, bang, bang!

  “Let me in! Eleanor! Timothy! Please!” he yelled, hitting the door until his hand hurt, then pounding with the other, then slapping it with both. “Please! I beg you! Let me in!”

  A door that had ceded its will to him now stubbornly refused. He leaned a shoulder against it, pushing with all his strength, until it gave way beneath the weight of his body. He stumbled inside, rushed up the narrow stairs and into the darkened room. His eyes darted all around, with not enough light to see, when a sharp blade of moonlight swept across Timothy’s face. He huddled in the farthest corner, wrapped in Dickens’ old fur-lapel coat, shivering with fear.

  “Where is she?” Dickens demanded, tossing aside his hat.

  Timothy tucked his knees to his chin, covered his ears, and pinched his eyes closed. Dickens grabbed his wrists and dragged him to standing. “Where is your mother?”

  The boy shook his head side to side. Dickens pulled him close by the coat’s lapel. The boy’s body tensed like a board, gripped with terror.

  “Why will you not tell me? Where is Eleanor?” he shouted, eyes wild like a man who’s lost his mind.

  At last, Dickens felt the boy surrender, every muscle wilt, too exhausted to resist anymore. Timothy opened his eyes, tears clinging to his lashes.

  “D-d-d-dead, sir,” he said in a small, rusty voice. “A y-year this very night.”

  *

  Dickens sucked in, but there was no air to breathe. It was a kick in the gut, a battering ram to the heart. He released the boy. His manuscript tipped out of his pocket, pages scattering at his feet. With knotted hands he gripped two fistfuls of his own hair and pulled hard, as if that might stop his mind whirling. It wasn’t possible. How could it be? He was with her but moments ago. Close enough to reach out and touch. He crumpled to his knees, body folding against itself, and pressed his palms hard against his eyes, willing the truth away. Make it stop, he wanted to say, bring her back.

  “Please, please, please,” he said.

  Timothy blinked, tears splashing onto the floor. Seeing them, Dickens looked up, blurry-eyed, as the boy wiped his face with a tattered sleeve, but the tears came too fast, in fully formed drops rolling down his cheeks. And he knew, with sudden and complete awareness, that his own grief was nothing. The boy’s mother was dead, and he’d just spoken of it, perhaps spoken any words at all, for the first time since she had passed. A year ago this very night.

  “Oh, Timothy,” he said. “Forgive me.”

  Timothy looked away, still quaking, his arms tight to his chest. Dickens glanced around the room, but it wasn’t as he knew it at all. It was a sad, dreary place. Dirty windows with rags stuffed in craggy holes, torn lace curtains, blank squares on the walls where the saints had been, a lumpy horsehair mattress, both arms of the threadbare chair broken away and gone. A lifeless hearth. Everything was changed. Her presence, whatever it was—phantom, spirit, figment, wraith—had transformed it. And now she was gone.

  Desperate for any proof of her, he pivoted to the bedstead, where the small leather trunk still sat, staring back at him. Dickens lunged for it, leaning on his elbows to pull it out by its worn leather handles. He blew the dust away and threw it open, relieved, even grateful, to see the neatly tied numbers, red ribbons intact. The Pickwicks, the Sketches, the Curiosity Shops, all there.

  He held one in each hand and turned to the boy. “But these books, Timothy, these are real!” He was asking more than telling, even if the boy didn’t understand.

  “She made me crisscross promise I wouldn’t sell ’em, sir. I wouldn’ta done anyway. ’S all I’ve left of her.”

  Dickens dropped the numbers in the trunk and inched closer to the boy, still on his knees. “But I’ve been here, haven’t I? With you?”

  The boy nodded.

  “And we sat by the fire? Into the night?” He pointed to the hearth, still trying to make sense of it. “You slept with your head on my knee—”

  “To hear you breathe, sir,” said Timothy, running a dirty sleeve across his nose. “’Twas a comfort to me.”

  “But you live here, by yourself?”

  “Promised her, too, I wouldn’t sleep in the street. I sells my sketches, sir. Yours sell the best of any.”

  “But who would let a boy, all alone—”

  “It’s only the money they cares about, sir. Nuffin’ else.”

  Dickens nodded, still reeling on the inside. He took out a kerchief and gently wiped the boy’s tears, awash in the guilt of his own selfish despair.

  “Y’knew her, did ya, sir?”

  He paused, masking his own sadness. “I did.”

  “Sometimes I feel she’s still ’ere with me. Even though I know—”

  “Yes,” he said, clearing his throat of tears. “I’m sure of it.”

  Dickens stood and held the damp kerchief to his lips. He couldn’t stand the sight of the grim room, so empty of Eleanor, or the thought of her son being without her. But the moon pulled his gaze to the window, where the skiff of snow graced the rooftops and streets, giving off a pure white light. It was her light, everywhere.

  “Will ya be goin’ now, sir?” Timothy asked, pinching the elbows of the coat sleeves.

  Dickens shifted from one foot to another. He looked at his manuscript on the floor, pages askew, but still of a piece. He leaned down to pick them up, straightened them into a stack as best he could. And, in that moment, recalled what Eleanor had said to him just before they parted, her cheeks paled almost to nothing, as if the life was draining from her.

  “Let the book be my Christmas present…”

  Dickens pressed his lips together, willed his chin to stop quivering. “Actually, Timothy, I believe your mother wanted…” He struggled to say the words. “That is, I was hoping to find, this very night … someone to hear my tale.”

  The boy looked at him with great dark lashes and wet, gleaming eyes.

  “And I believe that person might be you.”

  41

  “Stave One … Marley’s Ghost…”

  Dickens paused to find the word “ghost” stuck in his throat. Images flickered in his head. The billowing purple cloak, eyes that changed with each tilt of her gaze and became every blue that ever was, or no color at all; how she’d been everywhere, and nowhere, appearing and disappearing, knowing just where to find him, but never, never once had he seen her speak to anyone but him, no one else seemed to see or hear her. And the clock tower that had heralded their first meeting and their last—oh, the clock tower! Now dark and done.

  “What harm can come of a ghost?” she’d asked, here, in this very room. But it wasn’t a question at all. It was the answer. The great mystery of Eleanor Lovejoy.

  How real she’d seemed, and if not, at least as true as anything he’d ever known. Maybe she’d sprung from his imagination, his own roiling conscience, but it didn’t matter now. She had led him to Furnival’s, made him write again, followed him to the blacking warehouse and the ghosts of his own past, perhaps even inspired the spirits that would grow Scrooge’s heart, and his own. And all for the sake of her son. But the boy was nestled at his feet by a blazing fire—right now, right here—as real as any boy. This was where she’d wanted him all along. This, her wish for her son.

  “Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that…”

  With every molecule of his being, every expression and feeling he’d ever known, Dickens gave each word to Timothy what each word—and the spirit of his mother—had given him.

  “The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon �
��Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to…”

  Night pulled to morning. Timothy was gone when Dickens awoke in the broken chair. He looked outside, where the season’s first snow was now a soft white quilt, making the city all one thing, lovely and pristine. He scavenged a stump of pencil and left a note on a scratch of paper telling the boy to pack what things he wanted, whenever he was ready, and come to Furnival’s Inn. If he wasn’t there, the clerk would show him to No. 13.

  “Old Marley was as dead as a doornail…”

  Back in his rooms, Dickens sat at the writing table, wrote his title page—it was clear to him exactly what he would call it—and penned a short preface to his readers, an afterthought, two simple lines, and signed them. Then came a long letter to his darling Catherine telling everything as best he could, leaving nothing out. He placed it in an envelope finished with a red seal and stamp, and addressed it to Scotland. He tied a string around his manuscript, and set out to rejoin the world.

  “Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!…”

  Dickens plunked the manuscript onto the counter at the printing office, pressing it flat with his hand. A young apprentice picked it up, astonished at what he held in his grasp.

  “A Christmas Carol?” he asked, reading the front page.

  “I think it strikes just the right note, don’t you?”

  The apprentice wagged his chin in awe. Dickens then instructed him, in short order, that he wanted a handsome production, salmon-cloth on the outside, eight illustrations on the inside, a gold wreath around the title, gold on the spine; in fact, gilt on the edge of every page! But the price should be just five shillings apiece so people could buy it. And if Chapman and Hall wouldn’t pay for it, he would, out of his own pocket. It wasn’t a long book, it was a short book, and if they set seven typesetters to work through the next two days and nights, it would be on bookshelves three days shy of Christmas. And run six thousand copies, he said, at which the apprentice gripped the edge of the desk to steady himself.