Grimble at Christmas (3 page)

Grimble looked at Mrs Grimble and thought,
she really is quite a splendid woman. Three times
2p are exactly 6p, which is what I lost on my thin
sliced loaf . . . and at home there is a very good
book on cooking. It will tell me all about welsh
rabbits.

3. Four Shopping Days
to Christmas

Now there were only four more proper
shopping days to Christmas. Father Grimble
was in the study looking at some very small
islands on the globe through his microscope . . .
which is a machine that makes small things
look bigger. Mother Grimble was in bed with
her feet and Grimble was on holiday. That
morning he had had his first proper holiday
feeling; first he did not get up and then he
quite especially did not go to school and at
nine o'clock there was no roll call, and he didn't
answer his name. He purposely did not
have milk at eleven, although he would
have quite liked a glass, and then they had
lunch.

Grimble cooked. A bag of potato crisps,
peanut-butter sandwiches with chutney, a tin of
baked beans, a 21/2p piece of fudge and a
bottle of fizzy lemonade with two straws.
Grimble did not understand how anyone drank
out of a lemonade bottle with less than two
straws and as straws are very cheap – eighty-three
straws cost the same as a bottle of lemonade –
it was just meanness when people gave you a
single one.

The best thing about Grimble's lunch was the
washing up. There was hardly any, and he
left it for his mother to do when she felt
better.

A very odd thing happened after lunch.
You know how you can go weeks and weeks
without getting a letter and then suddenly get
two? Well, after lunch the postman came and
there were three letters, all for Grimble.
Three letters – although one was in a brown
envelope.

He took them up to his bedroom and opened
them carefully. The first was from his Aunt Percy.
He knew because she had funny handwriting
with words underlined.

As he opened it he thought he noticed a onepound
note lurking just inside the flap, but he
read the letter first . . .

Dear Grimble, here is one pound for Christmas. I
shall take cat away to the sea for a few days. We shall probably go by bus.

Your loving

Aunt Persimmon

He took out his notebook, in which there was
a page at the end headed cash, and crossed out
19p and wrote 119p; then he thought, I have not
been very clever and he rubbed out the 119 and
put in a 1 in front of the 19. There. One should
be able to get a jolly decent Christmas tree for
119p
and
have a bit left over for some washingup
powder, which was going to be his Christmas
present for his mother.

The second letter was from David Sebastian
Waghorn.

DEAR GRIM,
WILL YOU COME AND SPEND THE DAY WITH US ON THURSDAY? IF WE DO NOT HEAR FROM
YOU, I SHALL EXPECT YOU AFTER BREAKFAST. IF YOU CANNOT COME, COME AFTER BREAKFAST
AND EXPLAIN WHY. DSW.

David Sebastian Waghorn
was
a very funny boy.

So Grimble, feeling quite particularly cheerful,
opened the last letter; the one that was in the
brown envelope. It had not even been stuck down,
and said: "Dear Sir or Madam," which Grimble
thought not a very polite way to start a letter.

You are probably going to get very fat at Christmas.
All those rich foods washed down with important wine followed by heavy puddings
covered in cream and brandy butter and old cheese and biscuits and things
like that. Well, we at Thumpyew Farm are ready for you. We give you orange
juice and hot water flavoured with just a teeny bit of lemon and on Sundays
you get two peeled grapes, and in hardly any time at all you will regain your
youth and your health and your figure. Just think about it as you stuff roast
turkey into yourself next week.We at Thumpyew are ready and willing to help
you get
THIN
. .
.

And it gave an address to which one could reply.

Now I wonder why they chose me, thought
Grimble. He opened the door of a cupboard
that had a mirror attached to it and stood in front
of it, sideways with his shirt tucked under his
chin. Well, his back was certainly thinner than
his tummy. I mean, his back sort of caved in while
his tummy stuck out, but surely not as far as that.
Anyway how did Thumpyew know he was going
to stuff himself with turkey and things? Unless
he did something about it, the chances were that
on Christmas Day he was going to get fish fingers.

He put the pound note into his wallet slipped
the three letters under his pillow and went out. In
the shopping street there was a greengrocer called
Flewett who sold Christmas trees. A Christmas
tree, Grimble decided, was absolutely completely
essential to Christmas, and he stood in front of the
shop looking at a notice which said 20p a foot. He
was just wondering what people could do with an
extra foot (win a 3-legged race by oneself?) when
he realized that it did not mean a foot with five
toes at the end and a shoe on the outside, but a foot
with twelve inches to it.

So for 80p he could buy a four-foot tree, and as
he had 119p he would still have 39p left to buy
something for 40p with 1p off for his mother. He
peered through the shop window and saw someone
peering out at him and he waved; and the person
who was looking out waved, so he smiled and the
person smiled back. It was a boy with glasses and
freckles and suddenly he recognized him. It was a
boy from his class. He looked closely at him and
said, "Grimble" (for it was he) "you are definitely
getting a little fat." Thumpyew was right. "Now
that you are on holiday you are not taking enough
exercise", and he started hopping around outside
the shop, watching himself in the shop window
and wondering whether he was suddenly going to
get thinner or whether it took a long time.

As he was hopping around the greengrocer came
out and said, "Excuse me, are you all right?"
Grimble said, "Yes. I'm just taking a little exercise."
Mr Flewett looked at him and said, "If it's exercise
you want you can do some delivering for me;
Christmas trees; I pay according to the length of
tree. You look a good strong boy. You can take this
three-foot tree to stationmaster Wheeler at the
station for 5p."

"Oh thank you," said Grimble. "I know Mr
Wheeler," and he took the tree and went off to the
station.

He found that the best way of carrying the tree
was folding his hands in front of his tummy, getting
Mr Flewett to put the trunk into them, and resting
the top of the tree against his head. It was quite easy
to carry that way, although people in the street
thought he was a Christmas tree on legs and some
of them ran to the other side of the road.

Mr Wheeler was very pleased to see Grimble
with his tree and gave him a free platform ticket
and they went on to the platform and there was a
weighing machine. "I wonder," Grimble asked,
"whether I might weigh myself on your machine?"
Mr Wheeler said, "Yes of course you can, and you
need not put in a penny. I have the key," and he
opened up the machine at the back and pressed a
lever. There was a click and Grimble stood on the
machine and he weighed just under five stone. As
he got off the machine a card popped out of a slot
and it had your fortune written on it. His fortune
was a small card with printing:

BEWARE OF STRANGERS WITH BLACK HAIR. YOU ARE GOING ON A JOURNEY. THIS IS A GOOD TIME FOR LOVE. MONEY WILL BE DIFFICULT TO FIND.

"I don't know any strangers with black hair," said
Grimble, "What very peculiar advice." Mr
Wheeler said the machine was very old and it only
had two fortunes. The other said:

A HAPPY EVENT WILL TAKE PLACE SOON. SOMEONE YOU LOVE IS GOING ON A JOURNEY. BE VERY CAREFUL NOT TO GET TOO CLOSE TO WATER
.

"That means if I weighed myself twice I would
get both fortunes."

"That's right," said the stationmaster. "We like
people to do that because of the 'journey' part. That
way more people go on the railway."

Grimble went back to the shop and realized
that he now had enough money to buy a six-foot
tree . . . if he didn't get any soap powder for his
mother. A six-foot tree would be marvellous. Six
foot was much bigger than he was. When he got
back to the greengrocer, he decided to ask whether
he might buy a tree for himself with a bit off the
price for delivering it to himself, but as soon as Mr
Flewett saw him he said, "Here you are. Take this
four footer to Number 26, The Terrace; they've got
a children's party with dancing-round-the-tree,
and the tree isn't there yet." So Grimble took the
tree and ran.

It was very heavy, but as he waddled along he
said to himself, "Now we'll be able to get the
biggest Christmas tree anywhere, especially if I get
a special price for delivering my own tree."

When he got back there was only one tree left
outside the shop. It was the biggest one of all and
the greengrocer was waiting for Grimble and said,
"That's my last tree; we'll have to take it between
us because it's too big for one person to carry."
Grimble said, "All right . . . but will there be no
more trees?"

"Not now," said Mr Flewett. "Trees are all finished
now.We start selling tangerines after this."

Grimble was very sad. He liked tangerines but
you can't put presents under a tangerine. You
can't even put a lot of candles into a tangerine
and light them. And there was not another
Christmas-tree shop in the district. "Come on
then," said the greengrocer, and he took the thick
end and led the way. Grimble got hold of the trunk
near the top and followed him down the street. It
must have looked funny. The big greengrocer at the
front end – and all you could see at the back was a
pair of shoes under a lot of branches. "I can't see
where I'm going," shouted Grimble towards the
trunk.

"You just hold your end up," shouted the greengrocer
over his shoulder. "I'll pull you in the right
direction."

They walked a very long way and then he heard
the man say, "Here we are, hold on," and he heard
the trunk drop and a bell ring and a woman's voice
saying, "Oh there it is, you'd better hide it in the
shed in the garden because I don't want someone to
see it just yet."

Grimble thought it was rather a nice voice, a
bit like his mother's, and then the voice said, "Will
you put it on my account please," and Mr Flewett
said, "Certainly, Madam, goodbye," and the lady
went back into the house and Grimble came out
from the tree and looked up and it was his house.
He had delivered the Christmas tree to his own
house.

He helped Mr Flewett hide the tree in the shed
and then he walked about for a few minutes –
thinking. First he thought he must have managed
to lose a little weight after all that exercise and
that delivering Christmas trees was better than
living on nothing but orange juice and peeled
grapes.

And then he thought about his mother. She had
said she didn't want "someone" to see the
Christmas tree and the only someone he could
think of was himself. He decided he would pretend
not to know about the tree so she wouldn't be
upset. Really he was very pleased – it was one less
thing for him to organize.