Lost Christmas (7 page)

Lal smiled. ‘You're very sweet, love, but you don't
want to get all mucky.' She threaded her fingers through the grating and stretched her hand down as far as it would go, but the glinting object was agonizingly just out of her reach. She gave up. ‘Can't reach it!'

The young woman was a good bit shorter than Lal, so there was no way she would be able to reach it if Lal couldn't. She looked around and saw a man in a heavy trench coat on the other side of the road. He was staring up at a building site opposite.

‘'Scuse me! ‘Allo!' she called.

Anthony turned to look. Was that young woman calling to him? He looked around and didn't see anyone else so he crossed the street. As he drew closer, the old Indian lady got to her feet with the young woman's assistance.

‘Where are the flats?' asked Anthony, pointing at the building site.

‘What?' said the young woman. ‘No, they haven't built them yet.'

‘But I remember them,' said Anthony, looking bewildered.

‘There used to be an old factory there. They knocked it down … to build flats.'

Anthony looked across the street to the building site. Something wasn't right. He remembered them, and they weren't new. They were grubby and run-down. He was lost in his thoughts when the young woman broke through.

‘Listen, could you help? This lady's lost a bangle. Looks like a snake.'

‘Two cobras,' added Lal, in case that would help.

‘Quiver,' said Anthony automatically.

‘What?'

‘It's a quiver of cobras,' explained Anthony. A crow sitting on a nearby telegraph pole squawked and caught Anthony's attention. ‘A murder of crows'. An old lady trotted past with a Pekinese dog on a short lead. ‘A pomp of Pekinese.' The facts came tumbling out of Anthony seemingly at random.

Lal and the young woman exchanged concerned looks. Both considered the fact that Anthony was not quite right in the head. Anthony noticed the looks on their faces.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘That doesn't really help, does it?' He refocused. ‘A bangle, you say. Like a cobra.'

‘Two cobras,' corrected Lal.

‘Yeah, well, we was wondering if that was it,' added the young woman, pointing to the glinting metallic object in the drain. ‘Our arms aren't long enough to reach.'

Anthony nodded. He peered down into the drain and saw the glint. It didn't cross his mind not to help, even though helping involved reaching down into the grubby drain. He took off his heavy overcoat and removed the fingerless glove from his right hand. Then he knelt down on the kerb and flexed his fingers as if he was a magician
about to perform a coin trick. He slid his hand in between the narrow opening in the grate and stretched down as far as he could.

His head was turned to one side and he was looking at the toddler sitting in his buggy. The boy ignored him. He was much more interested in pulling at one of the shopping bags hanging behind him.

Anthony stretched down just a little bit more and managed to hook the tip of his middle finger around the metal object. It was curved and smooth; could be a bangle.

‘Got it!' exclaimed Anthony as he pulled it up. Lal and the young woman looked on expectantly as Anthony withdrew his arm. Lal's face dropped when Anthony's hand came out and she saw that he was holding a pair of scissors.

‘Not a bangle,' said Anthony. ‘Sorry. Invented by Leonardo da Vinci, you know,' he added, indicating the scissors. ‘Do you want them?'

Lal and the young woman both shook their heads no, and Anthony let them drop once again.

‘Well, thank you for trying,' said Lal, and she held out a hand to help him up. Anthony's ungloved hand took hers, and as skin touched skin Anthony reacted immediately. He drew in a sharp breath. A shock wave tore through him. Energy coursed up his arm at lightning speed and exploded in the centre of his head. He was blinded by bursts
of colour: oranges and reds and purples and whites. Then images started to bombard him. It was like a dream. There was no discernible beginning. He was just there.
There
was a wedding in India. There were mirrored shamiana tents, and garlands of flowers strung everywhere. It was the early fifties. There was nothing specific that Anthony could point at as an example of this, but, just as in a dream, he understood without understanding how.

The bride was sitting in her wedding chair, wearing an exquisite red sari. The floor around her was festooned with a sea of orange carnations. She lifted her head. It was Lal, and she was just sixteen. She smiled up at her husband. His name was Meher and he was a handsome young man, though some ten years her senior. He looked more nervous than she as he presented her with an ornately carved box. He lifted the lid and showed her the contents. Lal liked what she saw and reached in, pulling out her gold cobra bangle. She slid it on to her delicate wrist …

Without warning, the colours drained away like paintbrushes being washed clean and Anthony found himself looking at Meher and Lal standing in a rundown street in Manchester. Everything was blue-grey. All the life and joy of India had gone. They were outside Lal's tiny terraced house. A gaggle of braying skinheads was coming along the road. They hurled abuse and bottles
at Meher and Lal. Meher hurried to open the front door while Lal clutched the cobra bangle on her wrist. Somehow Anthony understood that it gave her strength. She glared at the jeering skinheads as they passed. Meher had to pull his headstrong young wife into the house. He closed the door behind them, locking out the harsh and unfriendly world.

Lal opened the back door and stepped out into a wilderness. The small garden was hugely overgrown and unloved. Meher sneered. Just one more thing to hate about this place, but Anthony could tell that Lal had just fallen in love. She saw the potential …

Then, as if time was surging forward, Anthony saw the garden changing. First it was cut down and tidied, then Lal and Meher planted. The seeds grew and the garden transformed into a truly magical place, where narrow pathways traversed bushes and rockeries from which a pantheon of statues of Hindu gods gazed out into the light …

Seasons came and went. Meher and Lal grew old together, until Anthony didn't see Meher any longer and he understood that he had died and Lal was alone. She was an old lady now.

He saw her standing in her living room, gazing at a
framed photograph of her wedding day all those decades before. She kissed the face of her husband and put the photo down. She took off the cobra bangle and laid it down on the arm of her chair. She rubbed her plump aching wrist. Then she turned off the light and headed up to bed.

Anthony stood in the darkness. Everything was quiet. Then a beam of light shone in through the window. It bounced off the TV screen and the stereo. It flitted around the room like some crazed firefly until it brushed over the bangle on the chair. It came back and the bangle glittered in the glare of the torch beam. Anthony turned and saw the face of a young boy at the window. Goose. He jimmied the lock with ease and came in to snatch up the bangle. He examined it in the light of his torch. Anthony watched him. He could see he was captivated by it. Then there was a noise from upstairs and Goose hurried away, leaving the way he came …

Lal shook loose of Anthony's hand and severed the link. Only a few seconds had passed and understandably the overload of information took its toll on Anthony. His knees buckled beneath him and he slumped to the ground, falling on all fours, breathing heavily. His head was pounding. The tendons at the base of his skull felt as if they were twisted tight like an old dishcloth. Flashes of light peppered the
periphery of his vision. Lal and the young woman looked down at him with concern.

‘Are you all right?' asked Lal.

It took several long moments for Anthony to catch his breath. The throbbing in his skull eased slowly. He tried to make sense of what he had seen.

‘Your husband,' Anthony panted. ‘He gave you the bangle.'

‘Yes.' Lal sounded more than a little surprised.

‘On your wedding day.'

Now Lal was starting to feel alarmed. ‘How could you know that?'

Anthony shook his head. He had no idea. He didn't know this woman. He'd never seen her before in his life.

‘I don't know,' he wheezed. ‘I saw … your garden … India … A boy.'

‘Boy? What boy?' asked Lal.

‘He was at the window. He broke in. He took the bangle.'

The two women both looked distressed, but Anthony was even more so. He scrambled to his feet.

‘I've got to go,' he said. There wasn't anywhere he wanted to go, but he knew he had to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

‘Wait,' pleaded Lal as Anthony hurried away, but he didn't hear her. He was scared. His head was buzzing
now the pain had subsided. What was happening to him? First he couldn't remember how he got here. Now he was seeing crazy elaborate visions. That wasn't normal. He wasn't normal. He didn't know what
normal
was, but he knew he wasn't it. Was he going insane? Maybe he already was insane. Was he even here? Maybe he was walled up in an asylum somewhere and this was all a drug-induced hallucination. If it was, he wished he could hallucinate somewhere warmer. He hated being cold.

Goose was running as fast as he could, faster than he should. He kept hitting patches of ice hidden under the snow and his feet would skid out from under him, but he would keep going, stumbling, slipping, but always forward.

‘MUTT!' Goose was scared now. Mutt never, ever ran away. Not once. Not even when he was a puppy. All Goose ever had to do was call him and Mutt would come running. Goose knew someone must have taken him. It was the only
explanation. But who would take him and why? And, more importantly, where? ‘
MUTT!
'

Goose finally had to stop to catch his breath. He put his hands on his knees and gulped down great lungfuls of oxygen. Sweat poured off him, running down his face and dripping into the grey snow beneath him. He kept looking all around. The streets were busy. Half of Manchester seemed to be out doing last-minute Christmas shopping.

Suddenly he heard a bark somewhere in the distance. It was carried past him on the breeze. He stood up and looked around. Another bark. Still a long way off but from behind him. He spun round, looking along the street. He looked between the legs of thirty pedestrians in time to see something small and brown turning a corner.

‘Mutt?' He started running again. He ran the two hundred metres to the corner, weaving between people, twisting and turning, always moving forward, always keeping his eyes on the corner.

When he got there he looked into the adjacent street. No sign of a dog. But then he heard another bark.

‘MUTT!' he called. Another bark and he continued running. Down the street to the next corner. A crossroads. He looked in all directions. No dogs. Another bark and he took off running again, to his left.

*

Anthony couldn't sit still. He was pacing back and forth, talking out loud. His only audience was a rather mangy-looking pigeon pecking at the remains of a bag of prawn-cocktail crisps that someone had tried to throw in a bin but missed.

‘Something's happened,' Anthony told the bird. ‘Happening,' he corrected himself, slumping down on a bench. ‘I can't work out which bit's a dream and which bit's real. Or maybe none of it is …' With that he jumped back up on to his feet and resumed his pacing. ‘Or perhaps I got knocked on the head.' He rubbed his gloved hands over his face and looked down at the pigeon. ‘And now I'm talking to a pigeon.' Anthony stamped his foot in frustration, causing the bird to fly away.

‘MUTT! HERE, BOY!'

Anthony turned in time to see Goose sprinting past. Instantly Anthony recognized him. He was the boy from the vision. The boy at the window. The thief.

Goose reached the middle of the park and stopped. He could see a long way in every direction and there was no sign of Mutt. Goose was ready to cry, but he sucked back the tears. He looked down and saw that his shoelace was untied. He focused on that, crouching down to tie it, forcing himself not to cry, willing the tears back into his tear ducts.

‘Aglet!' Goose heard the word from behind him and
jumped up and spun round. He saw Anthony, who was frowning. Cross with himself because that wasn't the best way to start a conversation. Still, it was a way.

‘You what?' asked Goose.

‘Little hard bit at the end of your shoelace. It's called an aglet. And that …' Anthony pointed his finger at the gap between Goose's eyebrows. This was a bigger mistake. The attempt at physical contact put Goose on guard and he pulled back sharply. Anthony could see the wariness in the boy's eyes. He was thinking Anthony was a nutter at best, a perv at worst. He would get away from him as quickly as he could. Anthony knew he didn't have long to get Goose's attention. He knew he should just get to the point, but he was unable to. Some sort of mental block somewhere was stopping him. Making him talk. He wondered if he had Tourette's. Not that he shouted out swear words uncontrollably, but he assumed Tourette's came in many different shapes and sizes. ‘That's your glabella.'