Chapter 5 Tales of childhood #2
‘Giving up on the campaigning?’ Padam teases.
Malcolm has told him a bit about the lost days of his youth, and how he had not taken up the causes that appealed to his hidden hippy soul.
He had explained that as an older, and hopefully, wiser man, he wanted to show support for the things that mattered to him.
Now he just smiles at Padam and says, ‘You can be sure I will be out again in the spring.’
That feels like a long way off now. Malcolm sips his drink and looks around him at the shop.
It feels particularly festive and cosy in the evening light, with its view out over the town.
Has his sense of excitement grown, along with his plans for Ruth’s Christmas?
Or maybe it is just being here and sharing this time with Padam?
Around the Market Place he can see illuminated shop windows and, in the centre of the cobbled square, is the town’s immense Christmas tree covered in white lights, standing tall beside the old Trinity Church.
He wants to ask Padam what he is doing for Christmas, then wonders if he even celebrates it.
‘Do you “do” Christmas?’ he asks tentatively. He knows Padam is a Buddhist, but there he was in the church, shaking hands warmly with Rev. Ruth.
‘Very definitely. I think, as I came late to it, I am a big fan – like my nephew’s children,’ he grins.
‘My nephew Dawa met his wife Jill in Nepal when they were both working for a charity. Then, when they came to the UK, they settled here – this is where Jill is from. She supported Dawa when he studied, and then he did the same for her when she got her doctorate.’
‘What does Dawa do?’
‘He’s an engineer. Specializes in bridges. He is the reason I settled here, and the children are the reason I fell in love with Christmas.’
‘You didn’t ever want to marry and have your own family?’ Malcolm finds the courage to ask. He hates this sort of personal prying, but the fragrant, heady wine is making him braver.
Padam looks up from the paperwork he is sorting on the counter. ‘Oh, I think we both know I’m not the marrying kind, Malcolm.’
Malcolm cannot read the expression in Padam’s hazel eyes, and he looks quickly away. He blunders into speech, saying the first thing that comes into his mind. ‘Three French hens, two turtle doves …’ His voice trails off.
‘And a partridge in a pear tree,’ Padam finishes, laughing.
‘I’m sorry, it was the mention of children that brought that to mind. My mother used to sing it at Christmas to me and my brother.’ Malcolm tries to refocus.
‘Whereas I used to read “T’was the Night Before Christmas” to my nephew’s children, Toby and Myra.
Now how does it go …?’ Not waiting for Malcolm to answer, Padam picks up his glass of wine and heads towards the children’s section.
Malcolm follows suit, ducking low under the Buddhist prayer flag bunting.
Ten minutes later they are sitting on the floor, children’s books open around them.
Malcolm has gingerly lowered his tall form, with his back against the radiator, knees bent.
Catching sight of a Roald Dahl book, he thinks he really must look like the BFG.
Or an elongated Alice squeezing into a small, box-like room, having eaten the cake with ‘Eat Me’ on it.
He is enjoying himself immensely, but he is seriously wondering how he will ever get up again.
He has The Tailor of Gloucester open in his hands, and is studying Beatrix Potter’s delicate drawings of the tailor sitting neatly on his workbench, sewing.
Malcolm thinks he himself looks a bit like the man in the picture, except it is Padam who is sitting cross-legged, not Malcolm.
He wonders if Padam does yoga. Perhaps that is something that he ought to try?
Turning a page, Malcolm is brought up short by the next sentence and, delighted, he reads out loud Beatrix Potter’s words.
‘But it is in the old story that all the beasts can talk, in the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the morning (though there are very few folk that can hear them, or know what it is that they say).’
‘Did that give you the idea for your story?’ Padam asks, looking up from the book he is studying, and Malcolm is made a little breathless by the thought that this man has read his book, and also, that he remembers it.
‘I hardly know,’ he eventually manages. ‘I thought it came from my mother, but perhaps it was she who read me Beatrix Potter.’
He thinks of one of the children’s picture books he had left on the shelf as he was browsing: ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’.
Why hadn’t he wanted to pick that one up?
Too poignant a reminder of his mother? Conscious it could never be as glorious as the book he remembered?
His mention of his mother had given him a jolt, and yet at the same time he had thought how much he would have liked to introduce Padam to her.
Has he ever sung, or even spoken ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ since her death?
Probably not. Until now. When he was a child, she had sung it to him and his brother and, laughing, had encouraged them to join in with extravagant actions.
As an older man, he remembers her once humming it in the kitchen as they prepared their Christmas meal.
She had only murmured the refrain, as if something was caught in her throat, a memory that stopped the words forming into song.
He had understood, but had tried to make her smile by loudly chorusing, ‘Five GO-OLD rings’.
He has no idea if it worked, as she had quickly turned away to bend over the stove and her face was hidden from him.
Padam nods towards the Beatrix Potter book open in Malcolm’s hands. ‘I think if I’m honest, I enjoyed those books more than the children did. Toby and Myra gave me an excuse for having a stack of children’s books by my bedside.’
Malcolm tries to focus on the here and now. Maybe he will put some festive children’s books by Rev. Ruth’s bedside? She might find them soothing after such a crazily hectic time.
‘Ah, here is one that Myra did like. She went through a stage of loving everything to do with fairies.’ Padam holds up the copy of Peter Pan he is reading.
‘Her voice was so low that at first he could not make out what she said. Then he made it out. She was saying that she thought she could get well again if children believed in fairies.’
As Padam reads, Malcolm blinks tears away. He hardly knows why he wants to cry. Thoughts of his mother? Anxiety for his friend Rev. Ruth with all that she takes on? Or is it just being here in a bookshop lit by fairy lights, listening to this gentle man read to him about magic.
When Padam has finished, Malcolm asks, ‘Have you ever wanted to write?’ He is sure such a book lover would have stories he would want to tell. He suspects not all of them happy ones.
Padam surprises him by laughing.
‘I used to write poems for the children. Just silly things to make them smile. And it helped me with my English – which was good, but some words could still trip me.’ He stares off into space, a look of concentration on his face.
‘I’ll see if I can remember one. Ah … this one was for Toby when he was little and was always disappointed by the pictures he found in his advent calendar.
’ There is another pause, and then slowly Padam starts to recite:
‘I’ve found presents and stars,
Crackers and bows,
Snowmen and puddings,
And candles a-glow.
I’ve seen stockings and bells,
A jolly yule log.
But I still haven’t found
A pig or a frog.’
Malcolm claps his hands and gives a small ‘Hurrah’, then feels flushed and foolish. It really is time to go before he makes an even bigger fool of himself. He hauls himself to his feet using the low windowsill for purchase, hoping he doesn’t look as decrepit as he feels.
Soon he is making his way across the Market Place, resisting the urge to take one last look at Padam, who has waved him off at the door. Would he still be watching him, or would that beguiling man with a taste for Fair Isle knitwear already be back inside, turning off the lights?
When Malcolm arrives home, he heads to the desk in the room that is part study, part library.
He does not even wait to remove his coat.
He opens the bottom drawer of his desk. What he had not told Padam was that there was a time when he wrote poetry.
It was in the years after his father and brother died in the car crash.
His mother had not been a woman to talk about grief, and for a while it had felt as though both parents had been lost to him.
She had become a formal and distant figure and, although over the years she returned to him, changed, as he was, those lonely years had been a desolate period for young Malcolm.
It was during this time that he had found an outlet in writing, encouraged by an English teacher, who he now appreciates was a kind and sensitive man.
Malcolm had written about the memories of his father that he was worried he was losing.
For some reason, he never thought that he would lose his brother, and even now, approaching eighty, he carries with him a clear image of his brother as the young boy he had been when he died.
With his father it had been different, and he had feared this gradual leeching of memories.
So, with his teacher’s encouragement, he had tried to pin the memories down with words.
One memory is particularly precious. His father had been a talented amateur artist and he would make pencil sketches of the surrounding countryside.
At times he would encourage the young Malcolm to climb on his lap and add his childish contributions of colour, not ever suggesting that these spoiled the drawings.
If Malcolm closes his eyes now, he thinks he might recapture the soft scratchiness of his father’s old jumper, recall the sight of his father’s lean hand holding a pencil.
Knowing that when this hand held his, it would smell of pipe smoke and Imperial Leather soap.
In the bottom of the drawer, Malcolm finds what he is looking for.
It is curled and crisp with age. He smooths it out in front of him.
He imagines he must have written it in his mid-teens.
That young man is lost to him now, but rereading the words, he recaptures his father and for an instant imagines the squeak of a tobacco tin being opened and recalls the woody scent of Balkan Sobraine.
My father drew the sky in pencil.
B for the flat cold clouds.
H for the hard horizon of trees.
But I pulled crayons from his pot.
Added crimson for his scarf and nose.
Pressed hard for the conkers in his glove,
And left shavings on his desk like leaves.
Malcolm sits back, and like the autumn leaves, his tears gently fall.