Billy Christmas Read online

  “Oh you know, with it being Christmas and all. Your dad still not found.”

  Billy felt his shoulders relax at the comment, surprised at how little it had got to him.

  “Sometimes when people get lost, they stay lost. Sometimes it’s hard trying to see the path home. Like me,” Agnes said. “Though that needn’t worry you too much, seeing as you’ve got that magic tree an’ all.”

  Billy turned slowly towards her, his relief replaced by flashes of fear. What could she know?

  “I’m sorry, I missed that.”

  “Fibber!” Agnes cackled, frightening the birds once again. “You just weren’t expecting the old Duck Lady to have that much wits about her, were you? What did he bring for me?”

  “He?”

  “It’s usually a man for a boy and a lady for a girl, depending on the person and who they pick. Not that many teenage boys are inspired by women, more’s the pity.”

  “I am,” replied Billy, looking away.

  Agnes cackled twice as loudly as before, sending the swans to the far bank of the river. “Now I think you know that’s not the same thing, Master Christmas, but good on you! World needs love aplenty at the moment, so you hang on in there no matter what you think she thinks. It’s not always the same thing, you know.”

  Billy blushed and tried to ignore the rising hairs on his neck. How much hope could he take?

  “So, what did he bring me then?” said Agnes, flashing her grey and white teeth at him.

  Billy pulled back the tea towel to reveal the pie.

  “Look at that.” Agnes ran her fingers over the warm crust. “I ain’t seen a Christmas pie like that in nigh on fifty years! In fact the last one I saw I might have made m’self.”

  He saw small tears form at the edges of her eyes, the low winter light making them sparkle.

  “Thank you, Billy,” said Agnes. “That’s really very kind. You’d best be off to school now though. Better not be any later, eh?”

  “But you have to tell me more about the Tree! How did you know about it?”

  “Him, this time, Billy,” said Agnes. She leant over and whispered, “and I think we’re out of time, but I’m sure we’ll meet again before the candle’s out.”

  A hand clamped down on Billy’s shoulder. He looked up blinking in the bright winter sun. The two policewomen, one who now had a hand on him, looked down. Billy’s dreadful tightrope existence drew in piano wire tight. How could he have been so stupid? Apart from trying to get his father back, he also had to protect his mother, who until yesterday had effectively not been there.

  “Unless I’m mistaken, school breaks up next week,” said the police officer with her hand on his shoulder.

  Billy had to think fast. “I was here getting a prescription for my gran,” said Billy quickly. “They know at school, and I’m only a little late.” He turned to catch Agnes, who winked back at him; she knew exactly what he needed her to say.

  “Is that right, Agnes?” said the police officer. Billy looked back at her, confident she would come through for him.

  “Never spoken to him before five minutes ago,” said Agnes, without missing a beat.

  Billy turned to her, open mouthed.

  “Shame he isn’t my grandson. Lovely boy. I’m sure he ain’t been up to no mischief,” said Agnes.

  “Back to school for you then, son. Let’s go.”

  He was so gob-smacked that he shook with the shock of it, unable to look at Agnes as the police officers led him away. He even forgot to worry about the consequences of crossing paths with the powers that be. The worry soon returned when he arrived back at school, on the playground, in a police car with blue flashing lights, and almost every kid in school pushed up against the windows trying to see if he had been handcuffed.

  * * *

  “Obviously everyone at the school has nothing but the deepest sympathy for you, Billy,” said Mrs. Herringate, the deputy head teacher, “but truancy at any time is totally unacceptable. If it were any other time of the year but this, I’d be calling your, well, your mother to let her know. However, you must realise that this is a dreadful time for her too. Surely you see that by acting up, you’re being a bit, well, selfish?”

  Billy hadn’t had the energy to muster an explanation. He simply rode out the conversation to a point where he could be ejected onto the playground. This, of course, was no more comfortable. Robert Lock had been waiting for him, and led the throng which met his departure from the main office.

  “Been out looking for your dad then, Billy?” said Robert.

  There was a gasp of mock horror from Robert’s gang, who waited for a reply from Billy, which never came. He simply turned and kept walking until they gave up following.

  At least Agnes had accepted the pie, meaning that he could claim the task complete later tonight. What had Agnes been thinking? It would have been so easy for her to help him out. Instead she’d stitched him up like a kipper; a phrase that Billy knew fitted but hadn’t a clue what it meant. And what had she meant about speaking with him again before the candle was out? If he met her right now, he’d steal her bread and throw it on the roof of the cricket pavilion where the ducks couldn’t get it.

  * * *

  Katherine cycled home with Billy. This was unusual, as she normally had something on each night after school. Today she was waiting patiently by the bike shed for him. Ignoring the stares and backhanded taunts of those around them, she greeted Billy with a quiet glance and they set off towards the river path. This would normally had Billy’s heart in double-back somersaults; today he was simply grateful for the distraction.

  They cycled in silence all the way along the river; with Billy not knowing how to start a conversation when he couldn’t explain what had happened, and Katherine, he suspected, not wanting to rattle the cage of her friend who was clearly losing the plot. On the rare occasions that they did cycle back to Marlow Bottom together, Katherine would begin building up speed from a few hundred yards before his house, in order to tackle the hill up to her house at the end of the road. Today she coasted to a halt beside Billy at his gate.

  “Thanks for waiting for me,” said Billy. “It was going to be horrible with everyone otherwise.”

  On days when Robert’s gang felt they had a good excuse, they would hound Billy on his way home; hence his love of road bikes with a good turn of speed.

  “I know you’d have done the same for me,” said Katherine.

  “I thought the choir were rehearsing tonight?”

  “They are. We didn’t find a replacement for ‘Good King Wenceslas,’ so I had the evening off,” said Katherine, without the hint of an edge.

  Billy’s face fell. He knew how proud Katherine had been to be allowed to sing a solo part, but hadn’t realised that this was why she had wanted him to sing. With the day he’d just had, he had made up his mind that if he were going to complete these tasks, he must now keep his head down at school.

  “Katherine, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s OK.”

  But it wasn’t OK. His friend was looking away to hide her surfacing tears.

  She broke the silence. “It’s just, I’d worked pretty hard at this. I don’t find it easy like, well, like you did.”

  “Katherine.”

  “I’m sorry, I know you’ve had a horrible day, and this is a horrible time for you.” Katherine turned back to him with a sympathetic smile. “Next year, Billy. We’re going to have such a good year. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  She cycled twenty yards back the way they had come before turning and passing him at speed, looking straight ahead. Billy watched her with his heart in pieces. He’d thought this task was going to be easy, but here he was with his balanced world teetering. Katherine turned the corner to the hill and disappeared. After a minute, he turned and headed inside to make supper for himself, his mother and the dog.

  December 16th

  BILLY’S MOBILE BEGAN WHISTLING LIKE an express train. The only ring tone that would
stir him at just after midnight, he’d decided. Despite the fact that he had only a few minutes of airtime left on it and no money to buy more, he kept it because he didn’t have a watch, at least not one he could wear to school. Mickey Mouse was no longer acceptable. Still fighting sleep, he slung on his dressing gown and padded downstairs to the Tree. For some reason he had expected it, or him, to be dormant or asleep until the stroke of twelve past twelve. But the Tree was out of the bucket once more and had one of his dad’s books out, thumblessly thumbing through the pages. It must have only just picked it up, as a cloud of dust from the neglected bookcase still twinkled around the Tree.

  “Lot of adventure to be found on these shelves, Billy.”

  Tired and still smarting from his day, Billy was not in the mood for small talk. “How do you know Agnes Moorland?”

  “Ah Agnes,” said the Tree. “So you two had a chat?”

  “We had a chat,” said Billy, just holding his temper, “before she shopped me, for truancy, to the police.”

  “Now, Billy, do you imagine that someone like Agnes,” said the Tree spinning to face him, “who is homeless, in a smart town like Marlow,” the Tree took another hop towards him, “has the luxury of being able to lie casually to the police?”

  Wrong-footed, Billy swallowed. “But how could she know about you?”

  “Agnes was a young lady on my last visit.”

  “But that’s impossible,” said Billy. “That would make her at least a hundred years old, plus however old she was when you appeared.”

  “Yes it would.”

  “But she looked…”

  “I wonder. How old does she look now?”

  “At least sixty.”

  “Sixty! Oh my poor Agnes.”

  “Probably more in fact, but I still don’t see how…”

  “Put simply, she wished to live forever. It’s the only time in thousands of years I asked a child to reconsider.”

  “Why did you?”

  “When I met Agnes, she was fifteen years old. Great intelligence, but humble beginnings and few prospects for a girl with wit and ambition. I have been having a quiet look around, Billy, and technological marvels aside, I have to tell you that I had never anticipated that what they call ‘gender roles’ would have broadened out as they have. Agnes saw beyond me on that count.” The Tree popped the book back on the shelf and turned to Billy. “I gave her a vial. A token by way of compromise. I implored that she first taste life and love and try to understand its nature before becoming beyond nature. I wonder what she has seen in all those years? And why she took the vial so late?”

  “She said that she’d got lost,” said Billy.

  “And that is why this task was so vital. She is truly lost, and would continue that way in static decay for a great many lifetimes.”

  A chill passed over Billy. Why had the Tree been so insistent that he should not try the pie?

  “Is it poison?” Was he to be a murderer?

  “Now that is a foul way to describe relief at a time of her own choosing.”

  “But what if she shares it with other homeless people?” What if she shared it with the ducks, he thought, horrifying himself by breaking into a grin.

  “She understands the nature of the gift.”

  With the subject of death, his thoughts had drifted back to his father.

  “What is on your mind, Billy?”

  He was more prepared this time. “If my dad is dead, will it hurt him to, well you know, be brought back?”

  “Ripped from the ground and shaken to life?” said the Tree.

  Billy hadn’t thought about this in such detail and shut his eyes against the image.

  “In two nights, I will have located your father; if he requires such treatment, I will let you know.”

  He had frozen, suddenly caught with an image that he’d tried to ignore for almost a year.

  “If he requires such treatment and you’d prefer to let life continue as it is, you can always fail at the tasks. The world is full of such choices, Billy.”

  “I believe you,” was all he could manage whilst wrestling his tired mind away from the awful possibility.

  “Did you find the task as easy as you’d thought?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “I think that is a good thing.”

  “Meaning I’ll be better prepared?”

  “Meaning the next task awaits you.”

  The Tree backed away gently and started what Billy was beginning to recognise as a ritual of sorts. There was a moment of silence, and then it was as if a gentle electric current had passed through the Tree. The artificial lights went out and the needles seemed to stretch and then pulse a vivid green light of their own. By turn each decoration twitched, as if being prodded by an invisible hand, before the next task was chosen. The Tree bowed and passed Billy the tiny sheet of music. They both paused for a moment.

  “Do you have any idea what it means?”

  Billy looked up in surprise. “You don’t know what the task is?”

  “Not always. Sometimes they are quite personal. What is the title of the music?”

  Billy had a double-edged, sinking feeling. He thought he might know what the music was, and knew he was going to have to go into his father’s study to find out. Without a word, he put the sheet of music on the mantelpiece and left the room. He passed the staircase and opened the door to his father’s study.

  Moonlight cut the room in half, silhouetting the back of the old leather chair, the rug by the fireplace and the mantel. Memories were unavoidable here, and it was because the room had always welcomed him so warmly that Billy felt so much more the trespasser now. Often his father would shrug off his own work to help Billy with some indecipherable mathematics problem. Even now Billy smiled at the thought of his father attaching a Post-it note to the teacher when the problem had proved impossible. The note would read “see me” with a sum that was achievable, and his phone number for discussion.

  Billy crossed the room to the only piece of inherited furniture in the Christmas house. His father’s desk had been passed on to him by Billy’s grandfather. Billy hoped that the desk was not now his, though it was impossible not to admire the regal, arched talon feet, embossed leather top and best of all, secret drawers. The magnifying glass was not in one of those, but the top right drawer. Billy reached for the strange green glass lamp that his grandfather had used to pore over stamps and turned it on. The small light cast fresh shadows across the dark room. Billy opened the drawer, recovered the glass and, turning off the light, retreated to the living room.

  The Tree was by the fireplace when Billy recovered the sheet music. He had hoped it might have started growing by now, but it still seemed tiny. Billy brought the magnifying glass to his right eye, and lifted the tiny paper until it came into focus. The letters rolled into the centre of the glass, blobbing up just big enough for Billy to make out. “Good King Wenceslas,” as he’d suspected.

  “You know what the task requires?”

  Billy knew where the task was going, but after today with the police it was impossible. He must keep his head down. “Yes, but I can’t.”

  The Tree shuddered so violently that Billy thought he was about to be attacked and threw his forearm over his face. Through half an eye, he saw the Tree subside and draw up arms formed from branches rising slowly. As it did, every piece of glass in the room, from picture to pane, began to rattle and then sound. The Tree climbed methodically through a full octave. On the third note, the mirror over the mantelpiece bowed, terrifying Billy that they’d both be showered with lethal shards of glass. By the fifth note, Billy had noticed a gnawing itch in his throat. At the sixth, he realised it was actually his vocal chords matching the frequency of the glass about the room. If it continued, he thought he’d throw up, but he didn’t think he could speak to complain. By the eighth note, he was singing, because he had to breathe, and as he exhaled the notes sounded. The sound coming from him was both unfamiliar and unmistakably adul
t. The Tree had not finished with him. With the octave complete, it now flung the glass orchestra into a verse of “Good King Wenceslas,” and Billy gave in and sang.

  Mark my footsteps, good my page;

  Tread thou in them boldly:

  Thou shalt find the winter’s rage

  Freeze thy blood less coldly.

  The Tree’s loose arms fell back into branches and the glass orchestra rattled to a halt. “There is no doubt that you can do it, Billy. The only question is whether or not you will.”

  With that the Tree hopped back into the bucket. As the velvet whispered in against the metal, it was clear it had already returned to its dormant state and Billy was alone. Still flushed from his first singing in just over a year, he tucked the sheet music into his dressing gown pocket and went back to bed. Good King Wenceslas. Well, at least it would make Katherine happy.

  * * *

  The next morning, Billy headed directly to speak to Miss Emerson, the music teacher. She was sitting at the baby grand piano in the school’s theatre going over the running order for that evening’s performance. She looked up as he walked into the room and a smile broke over her face.

  “Billy Christmas.”

  He smiled back at her. “I wondered if you’d remember me.”

  “Remember you? I’ve been trying to get you back in this room for nearly a year!”

  “Katherine might have mentioned it.”

  “How’s Mum doing, Billy?”

  Billy felt the flinch but showed only a small smile. “She’s been getting a little better, thanks. Thanks for asking, I do actually have a favour I need to ask you…”

  * * *

  Billy’s heart pounded as he thought about the prospect of having to sing in front of a crowd again. He left the theatre to find Katherine pacing by the door to the playground. She rounded on him immediately.

  “You were ages! What did she say?”

  Billy found Katherine a few inches from him with her hands gripping his bony elbows. He paused, lost in her eyes.

  “Well?” said Katherine, looking up at him.