Santa, baby

Santa baby

“Yeah but Santa is a myth. You know that... I know that, but what you probably don't know is that he is a myth of a completely different nature to most myths. He is a man made myth. We know that he isn’t real – it’s just a cute story told to kids to get them to bed earlier on Christmas Eve so that mum and dad can get the presents under the tree without any hassle.”

The girl paused and took a long sip from the banana milkshake that had been placed on the table in front of her. Her eyes narrowed slightly as the sweet liquid poured smoothly down her throat.

“Santa is a man made myth that we all know is bullshit, but we keep that myth alive because it’s convenient and makes Christmas all that more...magical.” She finished her sentence and glanced at her companion.

They were sitting in a small café that they had been glad to find on their drive down the motorway. It provided them with the opportunity for a much needed break from their journey. It was packed with people travelling away for their Christmas holidays. The howling wind that carried the promise of snow and the rush of the traffic that lay just beyond the battered hedgerow outside of the window could not be heard over the noise inside.

Coffee machines were whirring behind the long service counter that ran along one side of the café opposite the windows, and pillars of steam shot up from shiny machines and spread across the ceiling. Children were laughing, crying and playing at their tables and people were chatting merrily amongst themselves. Waitresses – young and old, were rushing between the tables and the kitchens with precariously balanced trays of food and drink.
The cheery notes of ‘We wish you a merry Christmas’ by the Glenn Miller Orchestra played harmoniously in the background. Tacky gold and red foil Christmas decorations in the shape of snowflakes hung from the ceiling and along the windows, blowing gently each time the door opened as more people entered. The whole place was almost sickeningly too festive for Jack's liking. The two strangers were sitting in a booth in the far corner of the café. Jack had his back to the rest of the room and the girl was leaning against the window with her legs up on the long seat in front of her.
“That's bullshit” the man muttered around the short cigarette in his mouth.
“You telling me you don’t believe in Santa, Jack?” the girl in front of him asked with mock surprise. She glanced up at him with mischievous grey eyes.
The man raised his eyebrows as he smashed his cigarette ruthlessly into the glass ashtray in front of him. “Do you?” he challenged.
The girl smiled slightly and cast her eyes to the window to her left, “did when I was a kid” she spoke in a sleepy voice as memories of Christmas’ past washed through her mind.
The man watched his companion for a few seconds, a bemused smile playing on his lips before leaning back into his seat and picking up the warm cup of coffee that had been sitting in front of him. His fingers were still slightly numb from the chilled winter air outside. The warmth from the ceramic cup made his fingertips throb pleasantly.


“We all do when we’re kids” he pointed out to her before taking a sip of the coffee.

He sighed and ran his hand through his hair as the hot beverage made him feel slightly more human. He cast a glance at a passing waitress. Her long blonde hair was tied back in a pony tail and there was silver tinsel holding it in place. Jack sneered at the tack and took a deeper sip from his cup.
He didn't know what he was doing there and, at first, he had been curious as to why Carrie had insisted that he went with her to his father’s old house.

'You'll understand better once you're there' she'd told him.

The look in her eyes when she had knocked on his door the previous night had held a certain uncertainty and desperation - a pleading almost, that had ignited the curiosity inside of him, and it had grown with each mile that they travelled.

The girl had been at his old mans funeral two weeks ago with a collection of his fathers old friends. He had spotted them sitting at the back of the service as he had risen to leave and he had been confused by their sudden appearance. He hadn't seen his fathers friends since he had moved out of the family home a decade ago – and yet there they had all been - sitting in a group, all wearing black and all mourning their lost friend like ghosts from the past, returned to haunt the youngest member of the King family.

It had been twenty hours since he had left his home with Carrie and their journey had been silent, with only the radio to break the awkwardness that hung between them in the car. A dozen times he had prepared himself to ask her where exactly they were going, and why, and a dozen times he had been too chicken to follow through with the question.

Perhaps it was fear of the answer he would get? He didn't know. Yet, as they had entered the café he had decided that he'd had enough of playing guessing games and he'd asked her outright about what was going on after they'd ordered their drinks and were waiting for them to be brought to the table. That's when she had launched into her story about Santa.

“We grow up and are told that everything we ever believed in as children... everything we were scared of, everything we loved, was all lies and we tune it all out of our minds, only – it's not all delusional crap you know?” the girl paused and leant across the table between them slightly. “This shit it real.” she finished.

“Real?” he asked, suppressing the urge to laugh as he noted the serious expression upon his companions face.

“Yeah, I mean take Santa as an example, Jack. Most myths are based on an element of truth, right? No matter how small that element may be.” She paused and cast her eyes over her companions face, secretly daring him to interrupt her, before she continued.
“What most people don’t know is that the story of Santa Claus is true...” she paused as the man sitting opposite her chuckled deeply as he unfolded his crossed arms, his shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and revealed part of a tattoo that carried on further up his arm beneath the sleeve. His dark eyes glanced down at his coffee cup as his thumb ran over the small looped handle at the side.

“Hey shut up and listen; It’s the damn truth!” she snapped at him, a frown etched onto her tired face. Jack bit his bottom lip and shrugged his apology. She took this as her cue to continue.

“See, another name for Santa Claus is Saint Nicholas and Saint Nicholas is...or was, an actual person. He was better known as Nicholas of Myra.” The girl paused in her story and bit her lip as her eyes browsed over the tables surrounding them and he followed her gaze.
The booth behind him was empty and the table opposite them was occupied by a man and a woman with two young children. The young girl and boy were having a great time as they crawled under the table avoiding their fathers attempt to pull them back into their seats. Their mother was speaking to the waitress with tinsel in her hair about the menu. There was nobody to overhear their conversation and so the girl continued.

“The story goes that there was this poor bloke who had three daughters, but being poor as he was he couldn’t afford any sort of dowry for them, thus meaning that the daughters would remain unmarried and, in those days that meant they would probably have to go on the game to survive.”
The girl paused and took a sip of the yellow liquid in her tall glass. Jack watched her intently as she did so, patiently waiting for her to make her point. She licked her lips and continued with her story.

“Now, dear old Saint Nick upon hearing of the poor man’s problem decided deep within his kind, saintly heart that he would help the poor man. However there was a catch because old Nick was too modest to help the man in public and plus, handing a man a dowry for his daughters in front of loads of people would have been embarrassing for the other bloke. He may have been poor, but he still had some pride, you know? So... Nicholas travelled to the man’s home under the cover of darkness and once there he threw three purses - one for each daughter, filled with gold coins through the window and into the man's house. Starting the myth about presents arriving in the dead of night from old Saint Nick.”

The girl put her glass down on the table and stared at it as Jack pulled a cigarette out of the packet in his coat pocket. He placed it between his lips.

“What are you trying to get at?” he asked her, gazing up through his eyelashes as he searched in his pockets for a cigarette lighter. The girl sat in silence for a moment, staring back at him before she spoke.

“What if I was to tell you that everything you had ever been told as a child, by your father, all the stories were true and not the ramblings of an old man like you say they were?” she asked and Jack smiled around the cigarette that clung to his damp lips.

“I'd tell you to pull the other one” he mumbled, still searching for his cigarette lighter.
The girl sighed and looked down at the table, her fingers drummed against the surface slowly.
“Look, Carrie – I don't mean to be rude...” he paused and the girl glanced up at the sudden change in his voice. “It's just...”

He searched for the right words, his eyes searching the ceiling above before he sighed and his eyes met hers once more. “Look. My father was many different things to many different people, and people don't always understand why it is that I didn't get on with him. You have to remember that the man I knew was different than the man you knew”

Carrie raised an eyebrow at him and the corner of her mouth twitched slightly as she thought over her words. Jack watched as she cast her eyes to the window next to them as a silence passed between them. He watched her intently, idly swilling the plastic spoon through his coffee as he did so, waiting for her to take up the conversation.

“Jack, do you remember when my mother used to visit your father and his friends?”
Her voice was low and her eyes were still on the window. He cast his memory back to the reunions that his father would throw every Christmas for his 'old acquaintances' as he would always call them. The house used to be filled with the smell of the large Christmas tree that used to be placed in the entrance hall every year. Its pine scent would reach all the way up to the fourth floor where Jack slept. Children were forbidden from the drawing room, living room, dining room and library during their visit and so Jack was always ushered upstairs out of the way. He would sneak down though, to the main stair way, and watch from between the branches of the decorated tree that shielded him from the sight of the adults. He would spy on the assortment of characters that were led through to his father in the drawing room by the family butler, Mr Gregory. He remembered the lady that Carrie was referring to. She had been young, pretty, and blonde – remarkably like Carrie.
He nodded his response and Carrie turned to look at him as he did so, his silent answer catching her vision from the corner of her eye.
“Well, Jack. That wasn't my mother” she whispered before taking the straw from the glass and drinking the rest of the banana milkshake from within. He was confused and she was playing with him, he could tell. “What are you trying to get at?” he asked, sitting further back in the seat and sighing as he did so.

“You look so much like her; it was twenty years ago... who was she then? If she wasn't your mum?” he asked - his brow creasing as he tried to work it out. The girl frowned and threw the straw into the empty glass. She sighed and met his gaze once more.

“Jack, she was me.”

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