Santa Maybe

by Scarlett Bailey

  ‘No, I don’t like this dream,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Not at all. You’re my heartbeat, Amy, my little girl, my baby. No, no. A world without you in it would be a very sad one. I couldn’t live with that.’

  ‘So you don’t want me to marry Santa then?’ Amy asked unhappily.

  ‘Live life without you?’ Sally said, looking at Santa. ‘What kind of man would take a daughter away from her mother, like that? No, Amy. Absolutely not. If that’s the choice, there’s no way I am letting you marry this man.’

  21. Blue Christmas

  ‘I JUST CAN’T,’ Amy said unhappily. ‘I just can’t vanish into thin air.’

  They were sitting in the sleigh on the roof of Sally’s house, a fine drizzle of rain coating them in chills, not that either one of them noticed the cold as they tried to take in what had happened. The face of the clock on the church tower across the road showed that it was five minutes to midnight, five official minutes until it was Christmas Day. How many lifetimes could they fit into five minutes? Amy wondered.

  ‘I know you can’t,’ Santa said, doing his best to smile at her, although sadness was etched into his face. ‘I understand, Amy. Of course I do. Your mum is a lovely woman, and your dad, he seems great too. Just the sorts of people I’d have liked to have had for in-laws.’

  ‘I mean, if it was like emigrating to Australia, or Mars even,’ Amy said. ‘If there could be phone calls or Skype, if once a year, say at Christmas, I could see her, if I could even just tell her where I was going and who I was with and she’d know I was happy and remember me…even that. If I could never see her again, that would be something. But I can’t, and I can’t miss out on the chance to know my dad at last either, not after all these years because…’ Amy faltered unsure of how to express what she found so difficult.

  ‘Because for all of these years there’s been this gap inside you, this hole that you’ve never been able to fill, and it’s there because you’ve missed a man you never knew. And now you finally have a chance to know him, and heal that wound, and you can’t pass it up. And I wouldn’t let you. I love you, Amy. You are my One True Love, and I will remember you. And I will know that you will be happy. And that is why you are right to choose your family over me.’

  ‘I’ll never forget you either,’ Amy said, her eyes brimming with tears.

  ‘Actually, you sort of will,’ Santa said. ‘Once that clock strikes midnight, and you wake up, you will have forgotten me. This dream might linger on for a few days, you might get a thing for men in red and white rayon for a while, but it will still all just be a dream to you, and a dream that will eventually fade – which is a good thing, because Eddie in design is really into you, and I think you’ll learn to…like him, too. And you will be happy, and you’ll have your family and someone to love. And your life will be just the way you wanted it. If I can’t have you as my wife, then knowing you will be happy is the next best thing.’

  Amy flung her arms around him and, for a long time, the two of them held each other in the rain, oblivious to the damp and the cold as they clung on to one another.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Santa whispered into her hair. ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘But it’s not fine, is it?’ Amy said unhappily, reaching out to touch his face.

  He leaned his head into her hand, closing his eyes.

  ‘I love you. If I could, I’d marry you like a shot. It’s not fair, why do I have to choose? The elves are allowed to go back when they like, you’re allowed to retire and come back to the world, why can’t I come and go as I please, what difference would it make to anyone?’

  ‘The elves are different,’ Santa said. ‘They’re volunteers. Special people who need a little magic, sometimes for months, sometimes for decades to heal. I signed up for a job for life. And unless I resign or I’m fired, then I’m taken completely out of the world until I retire. When I do come back, I get to live out my days under whatever identity I choose. The last Santa now lives in Hawaii and runs a tourist boat trip business under the name Chet Danvers, for example. And his wife is there with him, so it’s not that you and I would never get to come back, it’s that when we do, in fifty years or so, we’d be someone else.’

  Amy shook her head, refusing to believe the impossibility of the situation. ‘But you are my someone to love,’ she said. ‘You are my Christmas wish. And not even you can make my Christmas wish come true! And if it doesn’t, you’ll get fired anyway! So once you’re fired, come and find me?’

  Santa shook his head. ‘It doesn’t work like that. If I get fired, I lose all memory of the magic. I’ll get dropped back into the world without any knowledge of what I’ve done, who I’ve met. I won’t remember you, Amy. Besides, these are special circumstances. It’s not like I’ve broken any rules; everything we’ve done adheres to strict guidelines. The only thing I’m at fault for is being naturally irresistible, gorgeous and charming. And they can’t really blame me for that, or for fate throwing me together with the one and only woman I will ever love. There will probably be a tribunal, where the Powers That Be will get to decide what to do with me. If they think I’ve suffered enough, just by losing you, then they won’t fire me. And trust me, Amy, losing you – remembering you and not having you – will be much more painful than a life without magic or the memory of you.’

  ‘So basically there is no fairytale ending here,’ Amy said. ‘Whichever way you look at it, we can’t have our happy ending.’

  Santa shrugged. ‘You could look at it like that, or you could look at it this way: you are the only woman that I will ever love. If I hadn’t had this time with you, I would never have known what it was like to feel this way. As Charlie Dickens says, “it’s better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all”.’

  ‘Then I know what we have to do,’ Amy said, lifting her chin and smiling.

  ‘Do you?’ Santa asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Amy said. ‘It’s pretty much the only thing we can do now.’

  ‘What is?’ Santa asked, taking heart from her smile.

  ‘We have to enjoy whatever time we have left together, and we have to deliver a shed-load of toys all over the world to all those children.’

  ‘You still want to be my little-ish helper?’ Santa smiled at her.

  ‘I want to rip your clothes off and make love to you on the back of this sleigh, but I’m guessing that’s against the rules, too.’

  ‘It is a bit,’ Santa said, coughing.

  ‘So toy delivery it is,’ Amy said. ‘Come on, darling, let’s load up. Before this night is over we can at least make it a happy Christmas for everybody else.’

  22. Santa Claus is Coming to Town

  THE REST OF those five minutes to midnight flew by in flurry of magical speed. Santa kicked Rudolph and the other reindeer into warp drive, and Amy spent a good deal of time travelling faster than the speed of light. She clutched onto the sides of the sleigh and screeched like a child on a rollercoaster as the stars blurred all around her, catching her breath whenever they stopped to make a delivery. Their rooftop stops were happening so quickly that Amy often bumped into herself coming out of the neighbours’ houses as she crept into the next door.

  ‘Hiya!’ She’d wave to herself, pausing to consider that actually she didn’t look half bad in her elf costume.

  ‘Here.’ Santa called her over to a fireplace in their latest seasonal home invasion, where embers were still glowing in the grate. He offered her a mince pie. ‘Take a bite of this.’

  ‘No wonder Santa’s always such a porker,’ Amy said through a mouthful. ‘You must get through about a million of these suckers an hour.’

  ‘And that’s not the half of it,’ Santa told her as he picked up a still muddy-looking carrot and bit the end off. ‘The reindeers actually hate carrots. But you’ve got to take a bite out of every one. Just so the children know they’ve been.’

  Amy smiled at him fondly as he munched diligently on the vegetable.

  ‘Why do people ever stop
believing in you,’ she asked wistfully. ‘I mean why, when a person gets to ten or eleven, do they stop seeing all this love and magic and miracles? It’s so sad, so sad that something so wonderful suddenly disappears from so many lives.’

  ‘Oh well,’ Santa said philosophically. ‘I’m not sure that it does, really. Look at you, you went to bed thinking I was a childhood fantasy, and now you know I’m all man, baby.’

  Amy giggled and blushed.

  ‘But actually, even though a lot of people say they don’t believe, they still do, deep down inside. And that’s why I stay in business, because generation after generation of parents want their children to know the wonder of Christmas.’

  ‘I love you,’ Amy said, suddenly taking a step closer to Santa to kiss him. They lingered there for several moments longer than they should have, caught up in their embrace. The clock on the mantel stopped ticking; the fat flakes of snow that had begun to fall outside were now suspended in mid-air; the whole of the night time seemingly held its breath while Santa and his One True Love kissed goodbye. Again.

  ‘We’d better get on,’ Santa said reluctantly breaking the embrace at last. ‘We’ve still got the whole of North America to do.’

  ‘I know,’ Amy said. ‘I just never want this night to be over.’

  ‘But it has to be eventually,’ Santa told her. ‘Otherwise it will never be Christmas Day.’

  Amy didn’t know how many times she had circumnavigated the earth by the time they placed the very last present in the very last stocking.

  When it was done, Santa took her trembling hand in his and led her back to the sleigh. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I must take you back to Peckham.’

  ‘Right now?’ Amy asked. ‘Can’t we just have another hour? You never did take me skinny dipping in Acapulco.’

  ‘Sorry, no can do.’ Amanda, from Christmas Quality Control, appeared at their side, looking, it had to be said, quite out of place in her pencil skirt and suit jacket, teetering as she was on the crest of the roof in a pair of patent leather heels. ‘Santa, you are hereby summoned to the Celestial Court for an employment tribunal to discuss your failure – the first ever failure in all of time, I might add – to complete a Christmas Wish.’

  ‘But he didn’t fail,’ Amy said, clinging on to Santa’s arm. ‘He did find me someone to love; it’s just that I can’t be with him. It doesn’t mean I haven’t been the luckiest woman alive to have had him, even just for a little while.’

  Amanda’s expression softened a little. ‘I know,’ she said, gently. ‘But the truth is, when you wake up, your life will be just as empty and depressing as it was when you went to bed. And that wasn’t the point of selecting you for this year’s Christmas Wish at all.’ She turned to Santa. ‘Look, everyone knows how hard this is for you; no one wants to make it worse. But this is procedure, we have to go through it. And you’re in luck, you’ve got Powell and Pressburger on the bench, you know what a pair of old romantics they are. They’re bound to let you off with a slapped wrist and a life of eternal lovelorn misery.’

  ‘Powell and Pressburger…’ Amy muttered. ‘Why do those names sound familiar?’

  ‘Well, come on then,’ Amanda said, climbing into the back of the sleigh. ‘Let’s drop Amy off in Peckham and get on with it.’

  ‘You mean I can’t even say goodbye to her…alone?’ Santa asked.

  Amanda tutted and rolled her eyes. ‘Darling, we all know you’ve said goodbye to her about sixty-seven times already, that’s why I’ve been sent. You’re seconds away from reaching your legal time bending limit. And you know what happens when you go over the limit. You lose your licence, which is the last thing you need right now. I’m sorry, Santa. But this is a—’

  ‘Matter of Life and Death!’ Amy cried out.

  ‘Well, that’s not exactly what I was going to say,’ Amanda said. ‘But it will do.’

  ‘No, no – the film A Matter of Life and Death, made in 1946, staring David Niven and directed by Powell and Pressburger. It’s one of my mum’s favourite films; she makes me watch it every Christmas!’

  ‘And?’ Amanda blinked at her.

  ‘Powell and Pressburger,’ Amy said. ‘The judges on the bench at the Celestial Court. They are the same men, aren’t they? I bet that the two of them had some sort of magical connection, didn’t they? Did a few weeks as elves before the war maybe? Or hung out with the angels, did they? Because the films they made together were unlike anything else anyone has ever done or seen, and they had this way of looking at the world, which now I come to think of it, is very, very celestial. And I’m betting that A Matter of Life and Death wasn’t fiction, was it? It was a documentary.’

  Amanda raised a brow, looking both impressed and relieved. ‘And what if that were the case?’

  ‘Because…’ Amy struggled to recall the plot of a film she had seen at least once a year for the last twenty years. ‘Nothing is stronger than the law in the universe, but on earth, nothing is stronger than love!’

  ‘Finally!’ Amanda beamed at her. ‘You spotted the loophole.’

  ‘What loophole?’ Santa asked confused. ‘I’m mainly an action film man myself.’

  ‘In the film,’ Amy explained excitedly, ‘David Niven is supposed to be dead, but there’s a cock-up and he doesn’t die, and before they can get him to heaven, he falls in love with an American radio operator. And his girlfriend – she’s allowed to appear before the Celestial Court and plead for a way for them to be together – even though it’s against the rules!’ Excitedly, Amy turned to Amanda. ‘I can do that, can’t I? I can talk to the Celestial Court and ask them to let us be together, in a way that will work for both of us.’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ Amanda confirmed with some relief. ‘This is your last chance for happiness, and no one is more pleased than me that you discovered it. Now all you have to do is to make sure you don’t mess it up.’

  23. A Matter of Life and Death

  THE CELESTIAL COURT wasn’t quite the same as it was in the film, maybe because they couldn’t quite do the special effects in 1946, or maybe because Powell and Pressburger weren’t quite ready to blow people’s minds with the incredible truth of what it all looked like. Amy supposed most people weren’t supposed to know that anyway, unless they were magic or… well, dead.

  Amy gasped as Santa landed the sleigh on a wide column that seemed to plummet eternally downwards and, looking up, she could see what looked like row upon row of faces, stretching up literally to the gods. Those sitting nearest were easiest to make out; there were rows and rows of elves, including Suz, Kirsty and Heather and a large contingent of angels led by Laura-Anne, who was tapping her foot and rolling her eyes, obviously impatient to get back to choir practice; but beyond that it was impossible to make out who else was in the gallery. Maybe, as in the film, it was all the people that had ever lived, stretching back for millennia. Which, Amy did have to admit, put her rather on edge.

  ‘I’m speaking in your defence,’ Amanda told them as she climbed with some difficulty out of the sleigh. ‘For the prosecution we have Nicky, and, to be honest, that’s a shame. Nicky did a bit of time, on the, er…ahem, dark side. Never quite lost that devilish streak, if you know what I mean. Right, follow me!’

  Amanda stepped out into what looked like thin air, her heels clicking away on nothing at all.

  Worried that the fact that she wasn’t in any way magical might mean her endlessly plummeting downwards for all eternity, Amy took hold of Santa’s hand, relieved when she discovered she could jingle her way to the dock behind Amanda with just as much ease.

  At a high sort of desk sat two elderly looking men, both balding, one sporting a rather dashing moustache and each of them dressed very smartly in dark suits.

  ‘Santa Claus,’ Powell spoke, his voice strong and clear. ‘Also known as Father Christmas, also known as Saint Nick, also known as Dave Healey of Gloucestershire…’

  ‘Dave?’ Amy whispered into Santa’s ear. ‘I never had you down as a Dave.
’

  ‘Shhh,’ Amanda warned them.

  ‘You are charged with not bringing your annual Christmas Wish to fruition; with failing to provide one Amy Tucker with someone to love; with fraternising with a civilian and wantonly using your time travel permit to dance in New York! What have you got to say for yourself?’

  ‘I am guilty of all those things, I suppose,’ Santa said. ‘But only because…well, you can see how it is? Maybe I am the first Santa to fail like this, but I’m also the first Santa to meet his One True Love on the very night he’s supposed to be fixing her up with someone called Eddie.’

  ‘Hmm. Amanda? What do you have to say in your client’s defence?’

  ‘He fell in love, sir,’ Amanda said. ‘As he was always destined to do when he met Amy Tucker. There is not, nor never will be, another woman for him. I know it’s a one in a billion chance that the person designated for a Christmas Wish would also be Santa’s One True Love, but perhaps it wasn’t just a coincidence. Perhaps the Powers That Be meant it to happen this way. After all, doesn’t everyone deserve a chance to be happy? Especially those that give so much, like Santa does?’

  ‘Nonsense!’ The spokesperson for the prosecution spoke up. Amy was surprised to see that ‘Nicky’ was a rather glamorous redhead whose hair tumbled forward in glossy curls as she leaned forward across her desk. ‘This philanderer, this Lothario, used and abused his position to seduce this woman. Kissing her in Venice, taking her dancing in New York, making out with her for a whole Cornish summer night!’ Gasps of shock reverberated upwards through the public gallery. ‘He’s sex mad, he should be fired immediately and this woman should be returned to her bed and the sad miserable life for which she is destined.’

  ‘Excuse me!’ Amy said, stamping her foot crossly. ‘Excuse me, when do I get to speak?’