by Matt Haig
Bang!
A shot sounded. And a bullet whizzed by. Bang!
Another one.
Making a hole in the side of the sleigh.
‘No, no, no!’
This was bad news for two reasons. First, Father Christmas didn’t like the idea of him or his reindeer getting shot. And second, for the soldiers to be moving and shooting, it meant time must be moving forward.
And yes – look – the whole of London was in motion. With horses and carts and night-time churchgoers.
He looked at the clock in the sleigh. It was still only the Beginning of Night but he could see the second hand was now ticking forward. He jabbed the ‘STOP’ button but nothing happened. He noticed the chamber in the Barometer of Hope was now just empty glass.
‘Uh-oh,’ he mumbled as he and the sleigh dipped fast through the air.
He saw the roof they were aiming at. It was too high now. They weren’t going to reach it. They needed more magic.
‘Jingle bells,’ he sang, ‘jingle bells, jingle all the way.’
Bang!
As the bullet went through Father Christmas’s sack, chocolate coins burst out in a shower of gold.
‘Oh, what fun it is to ride in a . . .’
Father Christmas closed his eyes and prepared for impact.
Smash!
But instead of hitting the stone wall the reindeer’s hooves made contact with a large window. Wood and glass splintered and burst into smithereens in front of them.
‘Oh, mudfungle,’ said Father Christmas, using the worst pixie swearword he knew as he sped through the window behind the deer.
Crash!
The reindeer skidded along the floor of a long room and screeched to a halt in a tangle of hooves on a plush patterned carpet before piling into a table. Father Christmas tipped out of the sleigh. He hit the wall. Then a giant vase on the table wobbled, then tottered, then teetered. Then finally fell. Right on top of Father Christmas’s head, before breaking into a thousand pieces.
The sound of a scream rang out. But it wasn’t coming from Father Christmas.
A Royal Guest
lbert!’ shouted the voice.
It was a young woman. She was wearing a long white nightdress and sitting in a very grand four-poster bed, in a room with the plushest softest carpet Father Christmas had ever trodden on (and he had trodden on a lot of carpets). She was reading something that looked a bit like a magazine. Father Christmas was less interested in what the young woman was reading and more interested in what she was wearing on her head.
A crown.
Gold, jewel-encrusted and dazzling.
And she was wearing it sitting up in bed.
Queen Victoria.
The Queen of England. The most powerful woman in the world. And he had just smashed into her bedroom.
‘ALBEEEERRRRRTTT!’ She had a very loud voice for a small woman. ‘Get the guards. And bring your gun! We have an intruder! A big fat Frenchman with a beard has just crashed into the royal bedroom with the help of some flying devil-horses. One is most alarmed INDEED!’
‘They’re actually reindeer. And I’m not, um, French. Let me explain.’
A tall thin man with a baby face and a wispy moustache that seemed to be made out of cotton appeared. He walked into the room wearing striped pyjamas and carrying a rifle. He pointed the gun at Father Christmas.
‘It’s all right, lambkin. I’ve g-g-got him.’
‘Blow his head off, Albert! Be a man for once!’
Father Christmas noticed that Albert’s hands were shaking. And so was the gun.
‘Listen,’ said Father Christmas. ‘I am very sorry about all this. And we’ll clean up all the mess.’
‘Oh, please don’t worry about the mess,’ said Albert. ‘We have servants.’
Queen Victoria looked at Albert crossly. ‘Albert! What are you doing? Why are you being so, so . . . royal about this?’
‘I am royal, honeycheeks.’
‘But he’s an intruder. Very possibly French.’
‘Technically Finnish, with a sprinkling of elf, but that came later,’ added Father Christmas helpfully.
Queen Victoria glared at her husband, her cheeks red with fury. ‘While you were hanging pretty baubles on that silly tree you got from Norway this hairy beast flew in with his devil-horses and tried to kidnap me!’
Father Christmas was upset by this. His own father may have been a kidnapper, but he certainly wasn’t. ‘I wasn’t trying to kidnap you.’
Just as he said this, Blitzen decided this would be the perfect time to go to the loo. Right there on the thick cream carpet. A big steaming pile of brown reindeer dung.
‘Oh no,’ wailed the Queen. ‘One of the devil-horses has done a stinky on the royal carpet!’
Father Christmas sighed at Blitzen. ‘I’m really sorry about that.’
‘Shoot him, Albert. Shoot the hairy man. And then shoot his beastly devil-horses!’
The rifle shook in Albert’s hands. ‘All right. All right. I’ll do it. I can do it, can’t I?’
‘Of course you can, pumpkin,’ the Queen said, a bit softer now. ‘Come on, my sweet German prince. Shoot him in his big fat belly. Actually, it might bounce off. Aim for the face.’
‘It feels wrong, you know, doing it here.’
Queen Victoria looked cross again. ‘Well, I’ll have to call Baroness Lehzen . . . BARONESS! BARONESSSSSSSS!’
Prince Albert rolled his eyes. ‘Not the house dragon!’
Then a very large old lady with broad shoulders, thick arms, a hairy chin and a long black dress came in. She looked like she was chewing a wasp.
‘Vot iz it, your Highness?’ she asked, in a German voice.
‘There has been an intruder and he needs to be shot. Alfred! Give the Baroness the gun right now.’
But the Baroness didn’t need a gun. She walked over to Father Christmas and pinched his nose. Then twisted it. Then pushed it. Father Christmas had never known pain like it. He held his nose as he fell back onto the floor.
The Baroness turned to the Queen. ‘Many years ago, before I voz your governess, I used to partake in a little street-fighting. The other girl wrestlers knew me as zee Horror of Hannover.’
Father Christmas watched in, yes, horror as the woman leant over and picked him up by his red coat and trousers. She started to swing him around in a circle. Albert put his hand over his eyes.
‘Smash him, Baroness!’ said Queen Victoria, clapping excitedly. ‘Throw him out of the window!’
And the reindeer watched in horror as Baroness Lehzen spun like a spinning top, faster and faster and faster, until with a great roar she let go. Father Christmas took to the air for the second time this evening, and flew out of the same window he’d entered minutes before.
‘Auf Wiedersehen, you kidnapping French swine,’ she shouted, with a little grunting laugh in her voice.
Dasher to the Rescue!
ather Christmas was flying through the air and falling, as fast as a plum pudding, towards the ground. But wait, what was that flash of shadow heading fast towards him.
It was Dasher! The fastest of all reindeer. He dived down and curved back underneath Father Christmas, just before he landed on the ground.
Bang!
The soldiers were shooting again so Dasher carried Father Christmas back up to the room. When they got there, Father Christmas saw Queen Victoria now holding the large rifle and she was pointing it directly at him.
‘How do they do that?’ she asked.
Father Christmas was staring at the gun. ‘Do what?’
‘The flying horse-devils. How do they fly?’
Father Christmas didn’t like it when she called the reindeer horse-devils, because the reindeer were sensitive creatures, especially Prancer, and they wouldn’t like being called names.
‘They are reindeer. They have nothing to do with horses or devils. They are very special creatures. And they fly because of magic. There is magic in the air because it is C
hristmas. But there needs to be more magic in the air. That’s why we crashed into your window. The flying was going a bit wrong . . .’
‘So who the dickens are you?’
‘I’m Father Christmas!’
‘Father Christmas? Who’s that? Never heard of you.’
‘I have, sugarplum,’ said Albert nervously, as if every word he spoke was made of porcelain. ‘I heard about him from Henrik. You know? My Norwegian friend. The one I got the tree from. He’s the man who goes around the world on Christmas Eve giving presents to all the children.’
‘Oh yes. I heard about that. What a creepy thing to do! Sneaking into people’s bedrooms.’
Father Christmas shook his head. ‘I don’t do any sneaking. You see, I stop time. Well, that’s the idea. Using magic to give people hope, which, in turn, helps create magic.’
This made Queen Victoria cross. And her cross-face was one of the crossest cross-faces in human history. ‘By smashing into Buckingham Palace? We’ve only just moved in. Look at the mess you’ve all made.’
Prince Albert raised his hand.
‘Permission to speak,’ said the Queen.
‘I was just going to point out that we do have two hundred and fifty-two other bedrooms, Feather-cheeks.’
‘That is beside the point. Baroness, give him a slap!’
The Baroness gave poor Prince Albert a sharp slap across the face.
‘It was an accident,’ said Father Christmas, talking about the window. ‘I am very sorry.’
Two soldiers from outside had now arrived in the bedroom too, a bit out of breath after running up the stairs. ‘At your service, your Majesty!’
The Queen nodded at the soldiers and had one more question for Father Christmas. ‘You do know who you’re talking to, don’t you?’
‘Yes. You are the Queen of England.’
‘Yes,’ said the Queen. ‘Technically the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and Head of the British Empire, which covers most places. So you could say one is the most important person in the whole world.’
‘Shall we kill the intruder?’ asked the soldiers.
‘I really feel it would be bad form to kill Father Christmas,’ said Albert.
‘Shut up, Albert,’ said Queen Victoria. And then she gave Father Christmas a long hard stare.
‘How do we know you are Father Christmas?’
‘The reindeer were flying. Surely that is proof of magic.’
‘I suppose it is a bit strange,’ said Queen Victoria. ‘But lots of things are strange. Like fish. And belly buttons. And the poor. We should probably not shoot you though.’
Father Christmas was overjoyed. ‘Oh, thank you. That is such a relief.’
‘No. I will have you hanged instead.’
Father Christmas gulped. He needed to think of something. So he closed his eyes and he thought very deeply. He went into a kind of dream. He saw an unhappy eight-year-old girl who looked very like Queen Victoria. She was in a very lovely room, full of amazing things – a rocking horse, spinning tops, tea sets, a hundred dolls – but she was getting shouted at, by a woman with her hair in a bun. A younger Baroness Lehzen. ‘I want my mummy,’ the girl whimpered to her governess. ‘Where is my mummy?’
‘You are being VERY NAUGHTY, Victoria!’ roared the Baroness. ‘I have to train you to be a lady! You could be Queen one day.’
‘But I don’t want to be Queen!’
‘Don’t say that, or you won’t get any presents for Christmas.’
‘The only thing I want for Christmas is not to be Queen – never, ever, ever!’
And so Father Christmas opened his eyes, and he said what he had just heard in his mind. ‘The only thing you wanted for Christmas, when you were a little girl, was not to be Queen – never, ever, ever.’
Queen Victoria looked very, very sad. Very, very, very sad indeed. Maybe even sadder than that.
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because I am Father Christmas.’
She laid the gun down and gently flapped her hands, telling the guards and Baroness Lehzen to leave. When the last guard had left the room she became lost in thought, as Blitzen began nibbling on the posh curtains. ‘I wasn’t a happy child, you know? Everyone expected me to act a certain way, because I was going to become Queen. It is a lot of pressure, when everyone expects you to be something important. Do you understand?’
Father Christmas knew the feeling.
‘Completely,’ said Father Christmas. ‘Yes. I really do.’
‘I had lots of toys, but there was no magic.’
Father Christmas felt like he wanted to cheer her up, so he started singing ‘Jingle Bells’.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked him.
‘I’m singing “Jingle Bells”.’
‘Why?’
‘To cheer you up.’
Queen Victoria burst out laughing. Albert looked concerned. ‘Darling, one of the devil-horses is eating the curtains.’
‘He’s not a devil-horse,’ said the Queen. ‘He’s a reindeer.’
And then she smiled at Father Christmas. And Father Christmas smiled back.
The Royal Seal of Approval
ueen Victoria apologised to Father Christmas. She really was very sorry.
‘To give magic to children, what a wonderful thing,’ she said.
‘The trouble is,’ said Father Christmas, ‘is that the magic is not very magic at the moment.’ He pointed at the smashed window and the billowing curtains to illustrate his point. ‘Last year, there was no magic at all. Christmas didn’t happen. And Christmas has to happen . . .’
I had nothing when I was a child,’ sighed Father Christmas. ‘Well, I had a doll made out of a turnip. And a sleigh. But it wasn’t like this one.’
He pointed at the large red sleigh and noticed a small tiny flicker of light appear inside the Barometer of Hope.
The Queen had more to say. ‘I’d have loved to have believed in magic. To know that some things can’t be explained. To have some mystery. That would have made everything better. You see, there was no mystery in my life and there never has been. Everything I’ve done was planned in advance and that can be as dull as a London fog.’
Queen Victoria sailed gracefully across the room in her nightdress to reach a small antique table, the colour of chestnut, and sat down at it, to write a note. And once she had finished writing, she picked up a wooden stamp and pressed it down on the piece of paper. It made a splodgy red mark on the paper with a picture of a crown in it.
‘The Royal Seal of Approval,’ she said with pride. ‘There,’ she said. ‘If you get into any trouble, just give them this. Show this letter to anyone and they will know it was written by the real me.’
Father Christmas looked at the letter. It wasn’t a very long letter. The letter said:
‘Dear Whoever You Are, Be nice to this man. Yours faithfully, Queen Victoria.’
Father Christmas felt a warm feeling in his belly. ‘Thank you. It’s nice to have friends in high places.’
She gave a small smile. ‘Likewise.’
‘What would you like for Christmas?’ he asked her.
Queen Victoria thought for a very long time. ‘India would be nice.’
‘India?’ said Father Christmas. ‘I think India is a bit big. It seems a bit . . . wrong to give somebody a country.’
‘Well, India will be mine one day. I assure you. But in the meantime a teapot would do very nicely.’
‘I think we have a spare,’ Father Christmas said.
So he went over to the infinity sack. And stuck his arm inside and wished for the right teapot – a white one with a pretty blue pattern of willow trees on it – and sure enough he felt the smooth cold china of a teapot handle against his palm. He pulled it out.
‘Yes!’ said the Queen. ‘That is the exact one I wanted.’
Father Christmas nodded. ‘I have a lot more presents to deliver,’ he said as he settled into the sleigh and took the re
ins.
‘But what if you crash again?’ the Queen said, actually looking a little bit concerned.
Father Christmas saw there was now a little bit of hope in the barometer. Maybe this meeting with the Queen had been enough to put some hope back in the air. Father Christmas pressed the clock’s stop button and, yes, it worked again.
Kind of.
Queen Victoria stopped moving. She became as still as the oil paintings on the walls. But then started moving again, very slowly.
‘All right, my deers. Time has slowed but not quite stopped. We better get on our way and just hope we’re too fast and they’re too slow for anyone to see us in the sky.’
And the reindeer took off, galloping through the broken window and into that London sky. A little wobbly, but they made it, safely flying over churches and houses and the round onion dome of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, and past incredibly slow-flying pigeons until they all landed on the slate-tiled roof of 99 Haberdashery Road.
There was a man and a woman walking arm in arm on the street below. They were almost still. But not quite. The man was smoking a pipe. He was taking it out of his mouth in extreme slow motion. Then Prancer, standing a little awkwardly on the roof, slipped on a tile and the tile became unstuck, and then it slid, very slowly, over the other tiles.
Father Christmas leant forward inside the sleigh and repeatedly pressed the stop button but the tile was still moving.
‘Oh dear.’
Time had to stop – stop completely. It couldn’t just stutter or slow down. There were 227,892,951 children he had to give presents to. That was a lot of children. So yes. Time had to stop.
What he didn’t know – but was about to find out – was that at least part of the answer lay at the bottom of this chimney. The chimney he was standing above and stepping inside, and climbing down simply by wishing. And as he travelled through it, he noticed, right at the top, fingerprints in the soot. They indicated the smallness of a child.
Hmmm, thought Father Christmas. And that small hum of a thought was about to grow into something very worrying indeed.
The Girl With a Beard