Spicy And Short Stories Beautiful Spicy And Short Stories for Children, Horror, Humour, Religious, English Tales, Romance, Sci-Fi And Much More..

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like acold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street;and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, andI plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. Ingoes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidaysresting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs.Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs.Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It wassnowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in mymemory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. Butthere were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped insocks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguarsand horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slinkand sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyedhunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from HudsonBay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the greenof their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the mufflingsilence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever since Wednesday - thatwe never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at thebottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it at all, it was, to us,like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor'spolar cat. But soon the voice grew louder.

"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, towardthe house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room,and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruinlike a town crier in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats inWales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the house,laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of thesmoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, whoalways slept there after midday dinner with a newspaper over hisface. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "Afine Christmas!" and smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong."There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Protherostanding in the middle of them, waving his slipper as though hewere conducting.

"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into thesmoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and ran out of the houseto the telephone box.

"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."

But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine cameand three tall men in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr.Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobodycould have had a noisier Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turnedoff the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt,Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and Iwaited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She saidthe right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen intheir shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders anddissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything toread?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves inWales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked pastthe harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and dayin caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouseparlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the Englishand the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before theduchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hillsbareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says:"It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knockedit down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not onlyshaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling outof the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands andbodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houseslike a pure and grandfather moss, minutely ivied the walls andsettled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numbthunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"

"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozenfeet they crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully.But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."

"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"

"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."

"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."

"There were church bells, too."

"Inside them?"

"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged bybishops and storks. And they rang their tidings over the bandagedtown, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, overthe crackling sea. It seemed that all the churches boomed for joyunder my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on ourfence."

"Get back to the postmen."

"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs andChristmas and the snow. They knocked on the doors with blueknuckles. . . ."

"Ours has got a black knocker. . . ."

"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little,drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making ghosts with theirbreath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to goout."

"And then the presents?"

"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the coldpostman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled down thetea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in hisice-bound boots like a man on fishmonger's slabs.

"He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's hump, dizzily turned thecorner on one foot, and, by God, he was gone."

"Get back to the Presents."

"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the oldcoach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of asubstance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to thegaloshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies andbunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinkingtribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there weremustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts hadany skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bagfrom an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us. Andpictureless books in which small boys, though warned withquotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did anddrowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, exceptwhy."

"Go on the Useless Presents."

"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag anda false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punchedtickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that noone could explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck thatmade, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moothat an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and apainting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the seaand the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzlingsky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under therainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge andallsorts, crunches, cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, andbutterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who,if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Familiesand Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little Engineers,complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle tomake the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make himbeat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall.And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stoodat the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in vain, foran old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with asmirk you ate it. And then it was breakfast under the balloons."

"Were there Uncles like in our house?"

"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And onChristmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle and sugar fags, Iwould scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, andfind always a dead bird by the Post Office or by the white desertedswings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men andwomen wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses andwind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles their stiff black jarringfeathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gasbrackets in all the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts andbottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in theirfur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, allready for the chestnuts and the mulling pokers. Some few large mensat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almostcertainly, trying their new cigars, holding them out judiciously atarms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, thenholding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; andsome few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor anywhere elsefor that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised andbrittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always,fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spatsof snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling greenand back, as he would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day orDoomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing, noovercoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down tothe forlorn sea, to work up an appetite, to blow away the fumes,who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was leftbut the two furling smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars.Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the dinnersof others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince,coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a snow-clogged side lanewould come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigaretteand the violet past of a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leeringall to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dogwhistle to my lips and blow him off the face of Christmas whensuddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips andblew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud, that gobblingfaces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against theirtinsled windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. Fordinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner theUncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put theirlarge moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little andslept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearingtureens. Auntie Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, bya clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had someelderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have threeaspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle ofthe snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I wouldblow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, whenthey burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. Inthe rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphinsand the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chineselanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war,following the Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce whatmight be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the whiteworld, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim and Dan and Jack andto pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on thehidden 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 rollhim down the hill and then I'd tickle him under the ear and he'dwag his tail."

"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered throughthe 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 weresnow-blind travelers lost on the north hills, and vast dewlappeddogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us,baying "Excelsior."

We returned home through the poor streets where only a few childrenfumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow andcat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudgeduphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of shipsout in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncleswould be jolly; and the ice cake loomed in the center of the tablelike a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with rum, becauseit was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as thegaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the longnights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked inthe cubbyhole under the stairs and the gas meter ticked. And Iremember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't theshaving 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 oneof us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and allof us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees madenoises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing incaves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we givethem? Hark the Herald?"

"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, twothree, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distantin the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied bynobody we knew.

We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelaslooked out On the Feast of Stephen . . . And then a small, dryvoice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a longtime, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from theother side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. Andwhen we stopped running we were outside our house; the front roomwas lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulpinggas; everything was good again and shone over the town.

"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said. "Perhaps it was trolls," Dansaid, who was always reading.

"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And wedid that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played thefiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang"Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. AuntieHannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song aboutBleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said herheart was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; andthen I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into themoonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see thelights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hearthe music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. Iturned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the closeand holy darkness, and then I slept.