A Forumshire Christmas Carol

Odo was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the buckie brewer, the publican, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Petty signed it. .
Odo was as dead as a buckie barrel nail.

Petty knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Petty and he were drinking partners for I don't know how many years. Petty was his sole  friend and sole mourner. And even Petty was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of crabbit on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubtedly fine crabbit outburst about Phillapa Boyens and Fran Walsh.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Petty! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, crabbit, old bastard!
The crabbit within him froze his old features, nipped his red nose, shrivelled his alcohol flushed cheek; made his eyes bloodshot, and spoke out shrewdly in his crabbit voice.
He carried his own crabbit always about with him.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear Petty, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored him to open his sporran and bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of  Petty.

But what did Petty care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance with crabbit buckie fuelled outbursts.

Once upon a time -- of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve -- Petty sat busy in Queen Tinuviel's Needlehole buckiehouse. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet to warm them. The Needlehole clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already -- it had not been light all day: and candles were flaring in the windows of Mrs Figg's Emporium for Discrete ladies across the way, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, Mrs Figg's shoppe and its suspicious wares was a mere phantom.

The door of the office was open that Petty might keep his eye upon his clerk, Blue, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was mixing rasberry buckie to order. Petty had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Petty kept the coal-box under his kilt; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, Petty predicted that it would be necessary for them to part.

"A merry Christmas! Eru save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Forumshire's Admin, Eldo, who came upon Petty so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

"Bah!" said Petty, "Bugger it!"

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this Admin, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

"Christmas a bugger, Petty!" said Eldo. "You don't mean that, I am sure."

"I do," said Petty."Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough."

"Come, then," returned Edlo gaily (as was his wont) "What right have you to be crabbit? You're sporran is full enough."
Petty having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said "Bah!" again; and followed it up with "Bugger it."

"Don't be crabbit, Petty!" said Eldo.

"What else can I be," returned Petty, "when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for yet another Jackson abomination; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour drunker; if I could work my crabbit," said Petty indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own buckie, and buried with a small cocktail umbrella through his heart. He should!"

"Petty!" pleaded the Admin.

"Admin!" returned Petty, crabbitly, "keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."

"Keep it!" repeated Eldo. "But you don't keep it."

"Let me leave it alone, then," said Petty. "Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!"

"Don't be crabbit, Petty. Come! Dine with us tomorrow."
Petty said that he would see him -- yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity first.

"But why?" cried Eldo. "Why?"

"Why did you become Admin?" said Petty.

"Because I love Forumshire and all its people."

"Because you love Forumshire!" growled Petty, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. "Good afternoon!"

"Nay, Petty, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?"

"Good afternoon," said Petty.

"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?"

"Bugger off," said Petty.

"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so crabbit. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humour to the last, So A Merry Christmas, Petty!"

"Bugger off faster," said Petty.

"And A Happy New Year!"

"Get to buggery!" said Petty.

Eldo left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who cold as he was, was warmer than Petty; for he returned them cordially.

"There's another fellow," muttered Petty; who overheard him: "my clerk, Blue, with fifteen buckies a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam."

This lunatic, in letting Admin out, had let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Petty's office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him.

“Petty and Odo's, I believe," said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Tyrant, or Mr. Banks?"

"Odo has been dead these seven years," Petty replied. "He died seven years ago, this very night."

"We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner," said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.

It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word "liberality," Petty frowned, and shook his head, and placed his hand on his sporran.

"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Tyrant" said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Mad and Destitute of ToRn, who suffer greatly at the present time from the delusion Peter Jackson makes good Tolkien adaptations. Many thousands are in want of common sense, sir. A few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Mad of ToRn copies of Tolkien's work to help them see their folly. What shall I put you down for?"

"Nothing!" Petty replied.

"You wish to be anonymous?"

"I wish for you to bugger off," said Petty "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make the mad people of ToRn merry. They can always come to Forumshire.”

"Many would rather die."

"If they would rather die," said Petty, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus PJ lovers."

Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Petty returned his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more crabbit temper than was usual even with him.

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened. The ancient tower of Lore became invisible. The cold became intense.  The brightness of the Needlehole shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. The Mayor Bungo, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Mayor's household should. Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold.
At length the hour of shutting up the buckiehouse arrived. With a crabbit-will Petty dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat.

"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said Petty.

"If quite convenient, sir."

"It's bloody well not convenient," said Petty, "and it's not fair. If I was to stop half-a-buckie for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"
The clerk smiled faintly.

"And yet," said Petty, "you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's buckie for no work."

The clerk observed that it was only once a year.

"A poor excuse for picking a man's sporran every twenty-fifth of December!" said Petty, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. "But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning."

The clerk promised that he would; and Petty walked out with a crabbit growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and Blue, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Needlehole Brae, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Russet Bog as hard as he could pelt.

Petty took his deep fried dinner in the Duck n' Muck; and having read the NotP, and beguiled the rest of the evening with buckie, staggered home to bed.

He lived in a  oversized buckie barrel. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the barrel, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.

Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the barrel door, except that it was very large so Petty could find it when drunk. It is also a fact, that Petty had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that Petty had as little of what is called fancy about him as any in Needlehole. Let it also be borne in mind that Petty had not bestowed one thought on Odo, since his last mention of his seven years' dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Petty, having his key in the lock of the barrel, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change -- not a knocker, but Odo's long mournful face.

Odo's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad kebab in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Petty as Odo used to look: with an air of general frustration an a down turned mouth of disappointment. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; like two month old lime jelly, but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part or its own expression.

As Petty looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.

To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy and the outbursts of Paw, would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.

He did pause, with a moment's irresolution, before he shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind it first, as if he half-expected to be terrified with the sight of Odo's ridiculous pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the barrel door, so he said "Bugger it to buggery!" and closed it with a bang.

The sound resounded through the barrel like thunder.

He fastened the door, and went in.

I think I'm going to save this for Christmas - I'll be working and a loner on Christmas Eve, so I'll probably need a few good Christmas carols and tales to get into some semblance of the Christmas spirit

Then I shall endeavour to have it all done in time.

Bloody brilliant ! Laughed out loud !
"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?"

"Bugger off," said Petty."
" But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humour to the last, So A Merry Christmas, Petty!"

"Bugger off faster," said Petty.

"And A Happy New Year!"

"Get to buggery!" said Petty.
And the best one yet.......
""If they would rather die," said Petty, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus PJ lovers."

Thanks Azriel- more to come tomorrow!

its quite cheery in a Gothic Horror kind of way.

Yes! This is just what I need to get the Christmas mood going!

Supurb! --- but I fear Odo's not gonna like this....

Orwell wrote:  --- but I fear Odo's not gonna like this....

All the better!

But he's dead! He won't be able to not like it!

Into his dark barrel Petty went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and Petty liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of Odo's mournful face to desire to do that.

Sitting-room, bedroom, buckie-room, jacuzzi room. All as they should be. Nobody under the sofa, with the fish and chips wrappers and old fag ends; a small fire in the grate; mug and buckie ready; and the little saucepan of porridge upon the hob. Nobody under the bed choking on the smell of discarded socks; nobody in the closet with his kilts; nobody in his tartan dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall, like a customer outside Mrs Figgs Emporium. Buckie-room as usual, full of his beloved buckie. Nothing in the jacuzzi but a faintly glowing green ring, which was normal residue from his annual bath.

Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his bunnet; put on his tartan dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap with the bobble in the shape of a fluffy purple thistle; and sat down before the fire to take his porridge.
It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel.

The fireplace was an old one, built by some Fjordian merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Forumshire tiles, designed to illustrate the History. There were Ady and Gandalf's Beard, the betrayer and the betrayed; Tinuviel Queen of Forumshire, Ambassadors Amarie and Leelee descending through the air from their forums like feather-beds, Ally, putting off to sea in butter-boats to an unknown horizon, and centre stage the Admin Eldo atop his Tower of Lore, figures to attract his thoughts -- and yet that face of Odo, seven years dead, came like the ancient Morgoth's wrath, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his buckied thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Odo's tall head on every one.

"Bugger it!" said Petty; and walked across the room.

After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a set of his bagpipes, a long disused set from his youth that hung in the room like a half dead spider with three legs, and that once he had played to woo a fair lass, until that was she had smashed him squarely in the face with a buckie bottle to make him stop. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread therefore, that as he looked, he saw them begin to inflate. It inflated so softly in the outset that the pipes scarcely made a sound; but soon it droned out loudly, and then all three pipes began to wail.

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour, but that was always the way when listening to bagpipe music. The pipes ceased screaming like a cat in a mangle as they had begun, together. The drones died away into a heavy silence.

They were succeeded by something glooping, deep in his barrel; as if some person were dragging something large that wobbled over the barrels in the buckie-room.
The buckie-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, glolipping; then coming along the hall; then coming straight towards his door.

"Bugger it still!" said Petty. "I won't believe it."

His alcoholic colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I know him; Odo's Ghost!" and fell again.

The same face: the very same tall face. Odo in his usual waistkit, and business suit, and the few hairs remaining upon his head seemed to bristle. A chain wound round his waist. It was long, like a tail, and attached all along its length there were increasing sizes of jelly; and it was made (for Petty observed it closely) of  jellies in all the colours of the rainbow but of increasing size along its length, until finally at the very last, one jelly that eclipsed all others and was a deep blood red. Odo's body was transparent, so that Petty, observing him, and looking through his waistkit, could see the two pictures he had of the sixth form girls of Our Lady aerobic and stretching classes in his pocket behind.
Petty had often heard it said that Odo had no balls, but he had never believed it until now.

No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through and could see none, and still Odo stood  before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the very long folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before: he was still incredulous, and fought for his crabbit against his senses.

"What the fuck are you?!" said Petty, finding his crabbit and cold as ever. "What do you want with me?"

"Much!" -- Odo's voice, self important, no doubt about it.

"Who the buggery do you think you are?"

"Ask me who I was."

"So who were you then?" said Petty, raising his voice. "A smart arse? I'm starting to believe it might be you after all."

"In life I was your drinking partner, Odo Banks Esquire. You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.

"I bloody well don't, no." said Petty.

"What evidence would you have of my reality, beyond that of your senses?"

"How the buggery should I know," said Petty.

"Why do you doubt your senses?"

"Because," said Petty, "a little thing affects them. Like fifteen buckies. You may be another drunken hallucination, bad buckie, yesterdays hangover colliding with today's drunkenness, in other words just another fragment of my excessive alcoholism. There's more of buckie than of businessman about you, whatever you are!"
Petty was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart as always, though usually it was just to annoy Mrs Figg or attract her attention, but now it was a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very crabbit in his bones and made him feel almost sober.

To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, felt like staring at his own in the mirror with a horrendous hangover; horrifying. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Petty could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its few reaming hairs on the top of high head, and suit, were still agitated as if wobbling like a jelly

"You see this buckie bottle?" said Petty, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.

"I do," replied the Ghost.

"I have but to smash this across my napper and swallow the broken glass, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Bullshit, I tell you! Bullshit!"

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain of jelly with such a dismal and appalling wobbling and glooping and burbling, that Petty held on tight to his sporran and thought of money and buckie, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its elongated head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast making it the longest face in history, and the biggest down turned mouth in creation!

Petty fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.
"Mercy!" he said. "Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?"

"Man of Crabbit!" replied the Ghost, "do you believe in me or not?"

"Aye," said Petty. "But why do spirits walk Forumshire, and why do they come to me?"

"It is required of every member," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow Forumshirians, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the forum -- oh, woe is me the disrespectability of most of it! -- and witness what it cannot now share,” here he took from his back pocket his ghostly apparition of the pictures of the Sixth Form Girls, “but might have shared in Forumshire, and turned to happiness!"
Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain of jellies and wrung its shadowy hands.

"You are fettered with jellies," said Petty, trembling. "Tell me why?"

"I wear the jelly chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it jelly by jelly, and flavour by flavour; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I pushed young ladies into bath tubs of it and then ate the jelly afterwards. Is its pattern strange to you?"

Petty trembled more and more and thought he had always suspected those were not accidents.

"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this with buckie, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured continuously on it, since. It is a ponderous buckie-chain!"

"Odo," he said, imploringly. "Old Odo Banks, speak comfort to me, Odo!"

"I have none to give," the Ghost replied. "It comes from other regions, Petty Tyrant, and is conveyed by other members. Nor can I tell you what I would. My spirit never walked beyond our drinking-house -- mark me! -- in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of my business ventures and leaky holes; and weary journeys lie before me!"

"You must have been pretty bloody slow about it, Odo," Petty observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference.

"Slow!" the Ghost repeated.

"Seven years dead," mused Petty,"And travelling all the time! Forumshire inst that big you lazy bastard."

"The whole time," said the Ghost. "No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of threads that don't stay on topic."

"That's called Norcing," said Petty, "But you were always a good man of business, Odo."

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Forumshire was my business. The Doctor Who thread my business; the BBST, that one about the Fjordians with the unpronounceable name, even Harry Potter, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of Forumshire!"
It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again and all the jellies wobbled.

"Hear me!" cried the Ghost. "My time is nearly gone."

"Well bloody well get on with it then," said Petty. "But don't be hard upon me! Don't be pompous, Odo!”

"How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day."
It was not an agreeable idea given a lot of what Petty got up to in private. He shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.

"That is no light part of my penance," pursued the Ghost thinking on what it had seen. "I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Petty."

"You were always a good friend to me," said Petty, "Cheers!"

"You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by Three Spirits."

Petty's countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost's had done.

"Your reaching under my kilt and yanking my chain Odo. Is that the chance and hope you mentioned?" he demanded, in a faltering voice.

"It is."

"I -- I think I'd rather give that a miss" said Petty.

"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls one."

"Couldn't I take `em all at once, like a line of buckies or three really friendly triplets and have it over, Odo?" hinted Petty.

"Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!"

When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table, and bound it round its long head, as before. It took a while. Petty knew it was finally finshed by the smart sound its false teeth made, when the jaws were brought together by the bandage.

The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open. It beckoned Petty to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Odo's Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Petty staggered to a stop.
Not so much in obedience, as in drunken surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret worse than closing hour at the Duck n' Muck; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. In fact it was exactly like closing hour at the Duck n' Muck. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.

I love that line: "Darkness is cheap."
It works as a metaphor too.

He is a fine writer is ole Dickens. Very fine indeed.

""I wear the jelly chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it jelly by jelly, and flavour by flavour; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I pushed young ladies into bath tubs of it and then ate the jelly afterwards. Is its pattern strange to you?"

That was it ! I know this is part Dickens but, youve twisted it so beautifully !! Ive always loved "Scrooge" but this beats it. I wont be able to watch "Scrooge" on tv (or book) sensibly again !

The inflating bagpipes were a particularly nice touch.

These non-biographical-at-all flights of fancy may be frightfully entertaining, Petty, but must you you use real people's names? People can easily draw wrong conclusions.

your head would make a great scary door knocker though.

Petty Tyrant / Scrooge? hmmmm sounds like Scrooge McDuck ...I can see the similarities now

Mrs Figg wrote:your head would make a great scary door knocker though.

Naturally and no doubt, but that's not my point, Mrs Figg!

Well look on the bright side Odo your role is done!

More to come tonight.

also

Be a couple of hours, probably.