In a country village, Christmas has its own unique set of traditions. The businesses that surround the village also have theirs, none more enlivening than the office Christmas party when indiscretions are many, and certain ladies and gentlemen become too far hearty even for themselves.
Samantha Ridley considered herself a stalwart of the village, but others did not necessarily agree, regarding her as aloof and somewhat suburban in her attitude to life. People did not think she had a hidden side until she had passed the point of a few too many and insisted upon rolling her own tobacco. When she did, she usually made more friends before forgetting her Mary Jane and retreating back into her suburban shell.
Marvin Ridley, on the other hand, was a complete outsider, accepted by everyone in the village, because they felt he was a good bloke, and that was the end of it.
***
Marvin was a brick Samantha decided. In fact, he had always been a brick she finally admitted to herself.
Sometimes she found him frustrating and even a little dull, but he had this unerring habit of coming through for her just when her confidence had deserted her and she was all at sea.
He’d done it again at the office Christmas Party in early December. The Marvin she rarely saw was suddenly a season’s full of greetings, humour and chat. Her colleagues were astonished and he had made her proud.
“That’s a fine figure of man you have there,” declared Sybil as she returned Marvin from the dance floor.
“Oh, stop it!”
“No, I am serious. Men are always such fickle creatures, and he simply isn’t.”
Sybil looked wistful for a moment, although Samantha must have missed it because she was caught up in her own thoughts that seemed to eclipse what she really thought about the enigma that was Marvin.
“He’s a complete brick.”
There, she had said it.
“He would make such a brilliant Dad.”
Awkward silence.
Sybil phoned Samantha the following morning.
“Samantha, darling….” she began.
Here she goes, thought Samantha, raising her eyes unmetaphorically heavenward.
“Do you remember the conversation we had last night….?”
“About men being fickle? Yes.”
“No, about Marvin being a brick.”
“Y-es….”
“…and how he would be a brilliant Dad.”
Samantha couldn’t see where this was heading.
“Yes.”
“Well, my cousin has her Christmas party, you know Susie with the girls, and she’s such an organiser, and they do such a brilliant Christmas party for the kids. They always have a Santa, and the usual Santa has pulled out at the last minute, and they desperately need a Santa that no one knows, and I just thought Marvin would be perfect.”
“Oh, really?”
“Say yes, pretty please, pretty please, please say yes….”
“I’ll ask him, although I am sure he would. When is it?”
“Saturday, 4p.m.”
“Oh, damn!”
“What?”
“He usually plays golf on Saturday, then a few pints. He’s not normally back until five…”
“Oh, please ask him, please, please, please!”
“All right, Sybil! I will. But I don’t know, it’s rather last minute.”
“I’ll make it worth his while, I really will.”
What exactly that meant Samantha could not imagine.
Marvin was taciturn and reluctant. Not a brick.
“You are fucking kidding me, right?”
“No, I am not.”
“Who is this woman, anyway?”
“You met her at the Christmas Party.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. In fact, you even danced with her. Closer than you should have done.”
Marvin grinned. “Was she good looking?”
“For that question you can bloody well do it,” snapped Samantha.
Marvin returned to being unhappy.
“I don’t have a suit.”
“It will be provided.”
“Never done it before.”
“Come on, make a bloody effort! You just have to say Ho! Ho! A few times.”
Marvin scrunched up his nose.
“Really – really don’t want to.”
Samantha rang Sybil.
“He’s not keen.”
There was a silence.
“Would you let me talk to him?”
“I have tried everything.”
“Let me ask him please. It would mean so much to me.”
Samantha walked through to the living room.
“Sybil wants to talk to you.”
“I said no.”
Samantha handed him the phone and walked out.
He came into the kitchen a few minutes later.
“Alright, I’m doing it.”
Samantha was amazed. Marvin’s awkward moments usually lingered until he had swung a club or something.
“Really? What did she say to you?”
“I said I would do it. I don’t want to let the kids down.”
Samantha somehow did not quite believe him.
The doubts were still lingering when Sybil handed over the Santa costume on Friday at the office.
“What did you say to him?”
Sybil smirked.
“I must have a talent for special pleading.”
Saturday came around. Marvin changed after lunch.
“You look just like Santa,” said Samantha as she tightened his belt. “Besides, the beard suits you.”
She tugged playfully at it, but Marvin was grumpy again, like an old dinosaur.
“Ah, just looking forward to getting it over with,” he said.
“You have to be happy you know, no one likes a bad Santa.”
“I know, I know.”
Samantha watched him shuffle off to the car – with stooped shoulders, like an overgrown child.
Samantha thought no more about it as she spent the afternoon wrapping presents until she looked up at the clock.
It was 6 p.m. How long did being Santa take?
She sighed and looked in the fridge to see which wine was open.
The call came with the kitchen clock showing nearly seven.
It was Sybil.
“Oh, my God, is Marvin all right?”
“I think so.”
“What do you mean, I think so?”
Sybil was never one to be at loss for words, but when she was embarrassed, she tended to exaggerate.
“Marvin was a totally brilliant Santa,” she said. “Absolutely amazing. But now he has vanished.”
“How can he vanish? Where did you last see him?”
“This is going to sound odd, but the last time we saw him he was going back up the chimney.”
“What the actual fuck?”
“He has vanished. It’s now really cold outside and I don’t know what to do. Please, could you come over and help us look?”
Samantha was angry as she drove over. She thought of Marvin stuck up a chimney in his Santa costume. She thought of Sybil and her village idiot friends, laughing. A cold rage boiled over.
Sybil had put on her teary eye and gushed with fake apology, as did her cousin Susie, while Susie’s husband Jeff hovered with embarrassment.
“Can I get you a drink?” he offered uselessly.
“Sure, please can I have one Martini husband?”
Susie tittered.
“Not funny.”
“Show me where you last saw him?”
“In here.”
“He went up this chimney?”
“Well, as he went to leave, one of the kids said ‘if you are a real Santa, you would go back up the chimney’.”
“So, he did?”
“Well, he was walking over to the fireplace and the lamp got knocked over. The lights fused, and when we switched them back on, he had gone up the chimney.”
Sure enough, there was soot all over the fireplace.
Samantha stared in disbelief
“But it’s not big enough.”
“We know.”
“I’ll take that drink now.”
“Eggnog?”
“Whatever…”
Samantha walked over to the French windows and peered into the garden.
Where was the bugger?
She opened the French window into the cold night and stepped out.
“Maaaaarviiiiin!”
“Maaaaarviiiiin!”
She was about to go back inside, when she heard a small voice.
“Is that you Sam? Is that really you?”
“Marvin?”
“Could be. Have the kids gone home yet?”
“Marvin? Where the fuck are you?”
“It depends on whether the kids are still here.”
“They are watching TV. Where the fuck are you?”
“Up here, Samantha.”
“How the fuck did you get up there?”
“I am not sure. But I’m cold now and I want to come down.”
“Well, come down then.”
“Can’t. ‘Fraid of heights.”
“Marvin. I have had enough of this shit. I am going back inside for another drink.”
“Did you find him?”
“Sort of. Do you have any more eggnog?”
It was an age before Marvin appeared at the French windows, dishevelled and randomly covered in soot, by which time Samantha was well away.
After the second eggnog Sybil put them both in a taxi.
Silence loomed over the kitchen table.
“Honestly,” said Samantha, “why don’t you take that costume off?”
He started to go up the stairs.
It was all so preposterous!
Samantha’s irritation would leave her only to return until she started to feel sorry for him.
“I don’t understand what happened.”
“It was all going swimmingly well until the smart aleck kid that belongs to Beverley Raynford-Brent told me that if I was a real Santa, I would go back up the chimney.”
“You cannot expect me to believe that you climbed up the chimney and out onto the roof. – That is physically not possible.”
“Physically not possible, agreed. As a matter of fact, I knocked over the lamp to give me time to think, and fortunately it tripped the lights. I sneaked out of the French windows and climbed up the drain pipe. At least I think I did.”
Samantha laughed.
“You are such a brick. So why didn’t you come down?”
“Found a warm spot on the roof to wait until the kids had left and I guess I fell asleep.”
“Ah, darling. -” She clasped his hand. “You really are a brick.”
They sat for a few more minutes in silence until it occurred to Samantha that Marvin had been drunk. Suddenly she wanted to know why.
“You don’t normally get that drunk.”
“I had to have a few to give me courage.”
“Why? Surely it wasn’t that hard?”
“If you must know, and this is something I really find hard to accept even forty years later, I was traumatised by a shopping centre Santa when I was a kid and it gave me bad dreams for years.”
Samantha’s blood drained from her face.
“Oh my God, I am so – so sorry,” she said.
“You weren’t to know.”
“It wasn’t the only thing that traumatised me, but that’s the reason I really didn’t want to do it.”
Samantha could not help herself. She wanted to drag it out of him.
“I still don’t understand why you changed your mind?”
Marvin was still drunk in the swell of his Santa trauma. Suddenly, all vestiges of self-restraint left him.
“She offered me a blowjob.”
“She did what! – Now you are a total prick!”
Samantha hurled her wine glass at him.
“Steady on. I haven’t been back to collect yet.”