“Bah! Humbug,” said Henry, as he tried once again to focus his old eyes on the share dealing program displayed on the computer screen in his front room and ignore the jangling, jigging and crashing sounds of the approaching Morris dancers.
‘Ignorant peasants,’ Henry muttered as he poked his dirty keyboard with gloved fingers.
He had retired to this thatched cottage located at the edge of this quiet West County village not to be bothered by noise or people. The once pretty garden was now untended and overgrown with brambles and weeds. Inside the cottage, dust was everywhere but, to Henry, it mattered not a jot.
‘Darned waste of time,’ he moaned.
Grumpily, he leaned over and flicked aside the grimy curtain which prevented the early morning December sunshine from obscuring the stock-market numbers that moved like lazy ants across his screen and worked industriously and tirelessly to make him richer.
Abruptly, he slammed closed the heavy window. The sound echoed down the corridor, through the empty kitchen, into the hall, up the musty stairs where the single photo of Daphne, his late wife, had toppled over on the landing window sill, through to each of the bedrooms that were never used because his family had long ago given up duty visits to their least popular relative. He didn’t expect them back until he was in his box and they gathered around to collect their undeserved spoils.
Scratching his unshaven chin, he watched the stock market indexes reveal his latest successes. It mattered not that the pension from his career working as an actuary was entirely adequate for his needs.
Henry’s joy came from every winning deal he made, knowing that for each win, someone else was a loser. Someone out there in a world that did little to include him would feel the icy glare of his intellect. Someone out there would lose money, perhaps their car or house or be unable to buy Christmas presents for their children because he had won.
‘Fools! Pah! You are all fools,’ he muttered as he made a sell order through his online stock exchange trading system and netted a profit that far exceeded the average monthly wage of many local countryside families – if indeed they had a job at all in the recession of 2009.
The sound of Morris dancers and folk musicians outside playing their music, laughing and jangling their bells was drawing closer. Henry tried hard to ignore them and concentrate on a report about a new fund that exploited foreclosed and repossessed homes.
‘A tidy profit, a tidy profit, from foolishness’ he smirked.
‘Fools, darned fools, trying to live above their station. I’ll teach them a lesson!’
The knock on his door almost made him fall off his chair. Who could it be? Locals knew not to knock. The warnings on his door were explicit.
‘Canvassers will be attacked by my dog!’
‘Leafleters will be sued’.
‘Trespassers will be prosecuted.’
‘GO AWAY!’
Yet somebody was standing out there on his doorstep amongst the brambles and nettles, ignoring his warnings of dire retribution … and, worse still, they had dared to knock on his door.
‘Darn uneducated morons can’t read now. I’ll teach them a lesson,’ Henry snarled, reaching for his walking stick.
‘Go away,’ Henry yelled through his front door, banging his stick hard on the wooden beams above.
Outside he could just hear a quiet voice that replied to his yell but could only understand what she said if he leaned closer to the door and listened very carefully, which he did now.
“Hello, hello, Mr Henry, came the small female voice. Are you all right? We just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas.”
“A Merry Christmas?” snarled Henry through the keyhole. “It’s just December. Christmas isn’t for weeks.”
“We know that,” came the tiny voice from the other side of Henry’s heavy oak door, “but we are collecting for the local children’s hospice and, to enable us to get around all the houses in all the local villages, we need to start early in the month. Every penny of the money we collect goes to making Christmas better for the life limited children. Could you spare a few pennies. No matter how little, it all goes to the children.”
“Why should I give my money away? I’ve hardly got enough to live on. Do you want me to starve?” Henry shrilled belligerently.
“Oh, in that case, if you haven’t got enough to eat, instead, perhaps you would like to come and join us. We are going to have a picnic on the green at the end of your road. You could watch us dancing and enjoy the music. I’m sure all the others wouldn’t mind sharing their sandwiches with you. It would all be free!”
Henry stroked his stubbly chin. ‘Darned fools were giving away free food now. Idiots!’
‘Only a fool would look a gift horse in the mouth, though’ he conceded to himself.
The heavy oak door creaked as he pushed it open on its rusty hinges revealing a pretty young woman with brown hair tied behind her head into a ponytail. At her side was a little boy with a shiny, well scrubbed face and his thumb in his mouth.
At the end of the path leading to Henry’s cottage, the Morris dancers clustered. Encouraged at getting a new audience, they leaped into life, banging their sticks and jigging around to their tunes.
“I’m Jane,” the young woman said, confidentially, as she placed her spare hand around Henry’s gnarled and veined wrist. “Come on”.
They walked slowly along the road. The Morris dancers and their band followed with their melodeons, whistles and violins shouting, laughing and exchanging banter with people from the houses as they came out to see what was going on.
Several of the Morris dancers rushed from person to person jingling the coins in their collecting boxes in time with the jangle of the bells on their prancing legs.
They set themselves down on the village green in front of the Blacksmith’s Arms and were soon treated to free roast potatoes donated by the publican who also served the Morris dancers with foaming tankards of ale as they munched their individual lunches.
Henry was introduced to the Foreman, the Bagman and the Squire. All gave him some of their food and one of them bought Henry a whisky to warm him up for he was shivering without a jacket. Then another of the dancers lent Henry his Morris dancing coat which he called his ‘tatters’ and by now he was really feeling very warm indeed.
All around Henry there was cheerful chatter, laughter and joking.
‘Darned fools,’ he still muttered to himself quietly so they couldn’t hear. ‘I’d be a fool to look such a gift horse in the mouth.’
When they had eaten, danced a few more dances and played a few more tunes, they all insisted that Henry have a lift in their mini-bus back to his door before they set off for their Morris dancing performance in the next village.
Safely back in his home, Henry seated himself at his computer and logged onto his online stock-exchange account.
The figures whirled in front of him. Numbers that asked nothing, demanded nothing of his emotions. Expected nothing in return yet made unceasing contributions to his wealth.
But he couldn’t concentrate. Jane’s gentle goodbye kiss on his cheek was burning its way through his whiskers and he could still feel the warmth of her hand as she had led him back to his home.
He also remembered her gentle voice.
“We practice each week in the village hall by this green and you can come along and join in, if you like. It wouldn’t cost you anything and you might enjoy the company. We go to the pub afterwards and have a music session with a few songs and tunes which is fun. We could be company for you.”
She didn’t seem to care that Henry didn’t reply, his mouth full of the delicious roast potatoes and cheese sandwiches and his mind bemused by the friendly banter.
“They are really a very friendly Morris dancing side,” Jane assured him. “They will make you welcome.”
“I discovered them when I came back to live with my Aunt after the death of my husband in Iraq. I couldn’t afford the cost of the rent of my home in London. My Aunt plays violin in their band,” she added.
She lovingly wiped her son’s face with a handkerchief whetted by her tongue.
“They’ve all been very kind to us and welcomed us like one of the family. Of course, I’ll have to go eventually because my Aunt’s house is very small and there is no work around here. I’ll be sad though because it’s such a friendly community. But at least for a while it’s given me a chance to get my head sorted and think about my future.”
“If you are too nervous to walk down the road by yourself,” she added shyly, “I could come and get you from your house … if you would like … to come to the Morris practice sessions each week that is.”
Henry had just kept munching, looking slyly from side to side at all the other villagers gathered around.
Jane smiled gently, understanding, and continued to sit besides him while she chatted with the others.
“We are going to the hospice to help on Christmas day,” she had said. “My Aunt is coming too and the Morris side will be dancing. You could join in and have your Christmas at the hospice.”
Henry could even still feel Jane’s son’s small hand as he politely held it up to say goodbye at his front door.
He leaned over and pushed open the window by his computer. A blackbird’s singing flooded the room. It seemed to have somehow picked up a few notes of the Morris dancing tune.
Slowly, unable now to concentrate on his share dealings, Henry switched off his computer. Perhaps he would shave and wash today for a change but first he would look in the attic for that old wooden flute he had once played as a boy. Jane had said her son wanted to learn the flute although she had worried they seemed so expensive.
On his way to the attic, he paused by the end bedroom which caught the sun perfectly every morning and had a further door off it into another single bedroom. Dust was everywhere on the floor and the bed linen needed cleaning but it could be made good, for little cost.
Perhaps he could trade some cleaning work from Jane for accommodation and food for her and her boy. It would give them a home. The sound of the child running around the large house would be annoying but there was a big garden outside and maybe he could teach him how to play the flute, as his father had done.
‘Exchanging housekeeping for a home and food would be very economical with no tax to pay,’ he grunted with satisfaction to himself. ‘A bargain which could be worth considering.’
He trudged up the attic stairs. The black wooden flute was battered but he heaved himself onto an old packing case to see if he could still make a tune and was surprised by a strange feeling of contentment, not felt for years, that flowed over him as he started to play.
He leaned over and made a detailed note about his intentions on the pad of his old writing desk lest later he should forget.
Once more he picked up his flute.
Outside, startled by the melody of the flute that suddenly emerged from the attic of Henry’s old thatched cottage, the blackbird paused briefly then joined in with his song.
Eventually, the sounds from inside the attic grew quieter then stopped. The blackbird stayed awhile and then went off about its own business.
When dusk fell, the blackbird briefly returned, attracted by the light from the computer in the dark room in the dark cottage at the end of the lane by the village green, before moving on to find his favourite roost.
At the Blacksmith’s Arms, the Morris dancing side had also returned from their charity collecting and were ending their day playing tunes, laughing and singing songs.
Soon, with the approval of the whole of the Morris side, a young lady holding an electric torch found her way down the dark lane, knocked several times, then, seeing the door was slightly ajar, and concerned the only light in the darkness was coming from the computer, pushed her way inside.
The End
P.S. Every year, I write a Christmas short story or flash fiction for all my friends online and otherwise instead of sending out Christmas cards and this free online short story for 2009 continues my short Christmas stories tradition.
It is a small thing but I hope it gives you some pleasure.
Perhaps you would also like to read some of my Christmas stories from previous years 
For last Christmas’s short story and details of previous years free online short Christmas stories see:
A Green car for Christmas by Rob Hopcott
A Merry Christmas to all, and a Happy New year!
Bye for now
Rob
Note: this Christmas short story is copyright Rob Hopcott 2009, all rights reserved. All characters and places in this Christmas short story and other free on-line humor, short stories, flash fictions, science fictions, micro-fictions, sudden fictions, post card fictions or very short stories on this site, are fictitious and no reference is intended to any person or organization, living or otherwise.
