Christmas Eve at the Green Man

A Willerby Christmas Short

It was Christmas Eve in Willerby and – to their delighted surprise - the Smith family were ready.

The fridge groaned with food and drink, three stockings hung above the stove in the lounge, and a glass of whiskey, a mince pie and a carrot sat on a plate on the hearth beneath them.

Dan’s phone buzzed.

“Lisa, Caitlin and Joe are going to the Green Man,” he said, “they want to know if we can join them.”

Sally looked at her watch.

“I’m up for it if you are,” she said, “we’ve got time and there’s no point trying to get Sammy to bed early tonight.”

Dan jumped to his feet and punched the air.

“Sammy”, he called, “get your coat on, Mum says we’re going to the pub!”

…

The Green Man was packed.

All the tables were full and there was standing room only in both bars.

All the fires were lit. The Beach Boys Christmas Album was playing on the Wurlitzer, just audible over the happy-drunk buzz of regulars and seasonal friends and relatives.

“Where are they?” Sally asked, peering around the crowded room.

“They say they’ve got one of the booths,” said Sam, looking around to check Sunny wasn’t around and then surreptitiously checking his phone again, “Caitlin’s sent a smug WhatsApp about reserving it months back.”

“Good thinking,” said Sally, “she’s entitled to be smug.” She couched down to talk to Sammy. “Darling,” she said, “go and see if you can find Sunny and ask him to show us the way.”

Sammy nodded excitedly plunged into the throng and then returned a couple of minutes later leading the bear-huge, bearded landlord by the hand.

“I’ve put them in the Tudor room,” said Sunny, “at the moment it’s not too far– follow me.”

The Smiths followed Sunny through the crowd, into the second bar and to an iron-studded oak door at the back, which he unlocked with a large key from a pocket in his leather apron.

“I’ll give you a key,” he rumbled over his shoulder, “and remember to lock it if you go out. It’ll probably be fine but every now and again we get some drunken confused thing that doesn’t belong here wander in and persuading them to go back can be a devil of a job.”

He led them down a wide corridor with a flagstone floor and worked stone walls where gas-lamps hissed in recessed alcoves, lighting up the boughs of holly and strings of winking electric fairy-lights suspended between the antlers of taxidermy deer and other stranger animals.

As the group neared one of the doors set into the corridor it swung open and a faun in evening dress wearing a claret velvet top hat stumbled out, belching loudly.

“Sorry!” He called, collapsing into giggles as he staggered on past them bouncing against the walls as he went.

“That man has drunk too much beer!” Sammy said, which made all the adults laugh.

“This is it,” Sunny said, stopping and knocking on a green painted door with a Christmas wreath hanging on it.

A moment later it swung open and revealed Lisa, Caitlin and Joe in matching dinosaur Christmas jumpers, sitting in a booth of shining dark mahogany behind a huge platter of chicken and lamb tikka on multicoloured rice studded through with whole spices and fried onion.

“Happy Christmas!”, they called together, then pulled party poppers, covering the Smith family in multi-coloured paper streamers and a faint smell of gunpowder.

The evening was a joy made perfect because it wasn’t planned.

Without anyone having to say the words it was agreed bedtimes would be ignored and – drinking, eating, talking and laughing - they stayed late.

They talked about magic circuses that arrived from far away on steam trains, of the northern lights and ghosts in armour that clanked around the village.

They talked of goblin land and the missionary sent to them who’d stayed behind and found home.

They talked about Lisa’s work and the messages she helped pass on. They raised glasses to poor brave Tigist who died killing the Big Bad Wolf and to Thomas the last troll now petrified to stone.

Then they were joined by Mauve and David who told them stories of life in the village before they’d arrived with their now grown children in the time when their son Andy was still alive, about how much easier it was to talk of him since a small miracle that happened at Christmas years before.

Together they wondered after the migratory patterns of dragons and all the strange dimensions wrapped in the angles of the dimensions they knew. They talked about Theresa’s dance fever and its defeat by Jamal’s strong faith.

They talked about the meals they’d order at the Take-You-Away when the van dropped by in February, when the first rays of real light began pulling apart the dead cold of winter.

When the children got bored of the adult gossip, Sammy and Joe were turned loose in the pub where they begged sweets, fruit drinks and magic tricks from the happily tipsy clientele.

Later, Sunny put them to work as below minimum wage gig-economy waiters and pot washers, at which they were ineffectual but so charmingly delighted to be given real jobs nobody minded the mixed-up orders and spilt drinks.

By the time the two families left it was gone ten and both Sammy and Joe had to be carried out half-asleep.

It was blustery and fingers of freezing-rain sobered the adults and bothered the children.

Joe, overtired, cried softly, burying his face in Lisa’s shoulder.

Then, “Hooray, it’s Father Christmas,” Sammy said sleepily.

“Almost, champ,” said Dan, “you sleep well, and in the morning, we’ll check he’s been.”

“No,” Sammy said, protesting, leaning back in Dan’s arms and pointing away over his shoulder at the wind-swept dark clouded sky behind him, “he here now.”

“Yeah!” Joe, said, suddenly, cheered, stirring to full wakefulness, uncaring of the cold and rain, “I see him too!”

The adults turned and saw their children were right.

Far above the village, lit by a yellow waxing moon was a glowing sleigh and a line of bright-antlered dark silhouette stick-deer made tiny by distance.

They watched it for as long as they could, but it was moving fast and was soon gone.

“Only in Willerby,” Lisa said, laughing, shaking her head.

“Only in Willerby,” Caitlin repeated laughing too.

When Dan and Sally got home, just in time to rescue the guttering fire in the wood-burner, they found the mince pie and carrot gone, the whiskey glass empty and sooty boot prints on the wooden floor.

They went to fill Sammy’s stocking and found it already done, full of the small, silly presents they’d been lovingly and painstakingly assembling all year and some extra clever things that moved and made music in ways they knew they could never explain.

Then they sat in front of the stove eating the toasted chestnuts they’d put on its top before they’d left and talked about what that meant for how Christmas worked in Willerby, about whether it was different to the rest of the world or just their version of a magic that was the same everywhere.

Then they went to bed glad – for all its mysteries, strange frontier wildness and dangers - to have made their home in Willerby.