'The Boy Who Spat In Santa's Face'

‘THE BOY WHO SPAT IN SANTA’S FACE’

A LOCKDOWN SHORT STORY

BY TIM ROBERTS

I left the decorations up when they locked us down the second time. I thought a bit of Christmas cheer might get me through the Dark Days. I get January blues at the best of times so I thought a glimmer of tinsel and a sprig of holly might add a bit of light. I could pretend it was at the end of a tunnel. In the Middle Ages they left the Yuletide decs up until February 2nd. Or was that the Dark Ages?

They let me work from home for a while. I work in a toy shop so I was lucky to get the gig. Online orders. Only a chosen few of us in Retail managed to keep working - this time and last. But it didn’t last long. They Furloughed me in the time it took me to get my head around the software. And then they made me redundant. Last in, first out. Or they took another look at my record. So I threw myself into my hobbies again - just like last March and April when the sun shone and we clapped Nurses. Making toys - carving little figures and cars and boats. Busman’s holiday. But it keeps me out of mischief and my pecker up. That and the tree, of course.

And it was as I was painting a little wooden figure to look like Iron Man that I had the idea : Why not give everyone else a little bit of extra Christmas too? I had the Santa suit left over from the Old Folks’ Christmas Party at Hollybush House last year when you were allowed to enter a Care Home. Plus stockings were being flogged off dirt cheap in Aldi with the Easter Eggs being shoved to the front already, so I bought a job lot.

I filled each stocking with a figure and a wooden vehicle each. I added hand sanitiser and a Spider-Man face mask and a knitted rainbow and a slice of banana bread my social worker managed to smuggle me, plus the obligatory tangerine and candy cane. I crammed my Santa sack full of goodies and set off to spread Christmas cheer. On January 23rd.

I’d already been getting funny looks from folk who could see my Fairy looking tired through the front window - stuck up my moulting tree. A few pisstakes had come my way on my front step when neighbours clocked my wreath still hanging mournfully on my door like Marley’s Face. So when people saw me marching up the street as Jolly Old Saint Nick they must have thought I’d gone totally round the bend. But the jibes and catcalls just spurred me on. By the time I got to the Foodbank I think I really did believe I was the man himself : Father Christmas.

I thought the volunteers at the Foodbank would be only too grateful for my unseasonal stockings - but they looked at me with the same doubtful wariness as the Chavs in the street chucking beer cans at me. So instead I went on a tour of the building to perform a bit of Direct Action Giving amongst the Needy.

I found a young woman in clothes too cold for January, staggering up and down the shelves stacked with donated tins and packets and bags. She clutched at the hand of a stick-thin waif of a little girl who must have been her daughter. I approached with my hand in my Santa sack and the mother looked at me through her tunnel eyes.

“Ho, ho, ho!” I greeted her, in my customary way.

“What’s so funny?” she pursed her lips at me.

“Would your little girl like a stocking?”

“Is you a paedo?” came the spittled question.

“No – I’m just trying to spread some Christmas cheer.”

“It’s nearly February. There’s a Lockdown.”

“All the more reason.”

She stared at me suspiciously, but a smile crept onto her thin lips.

“I don’t suppose you have any tampons in there, do ya?” she asked.

“No, I don’t think the elves make them.” I said. “I’ve got some banana bread, though.” I offered her the slice from Shirley – my social worker.

“Thanks, I’m starving!” she took the slice and crammed it into her mouth – but immediately starting spitting out chunks of it. “It’s rock hard – it’s stale, you bloody maniac!” she shouted at me; and the next thing I knew there was a large pair of hands on my belt buckle.

As well as the tiny girl there had also been one little boy who kept staring at me all the time I was trying to force my stockings on the volunteers and the skinny young woman. I say ‘little boy’ - he must have been around ten - eleven. But I could feel him studying me under his furrowed brow as the man with burly arms led me back out onto the street. He even followed me outside.

I was a bit dizzy out on the pavement so found it hard to focus on him as he said something about there being ‘No Such Thing as Me’. I think I managed to ask him what he wanted for Christmas when he launched a mouthful of gooey phlegm at me which splattered all over my nose and mouth.

“Fuckin’ nutter!” he yelled after me as I staggered back home, sack still full of festive stocking fillers.

It turns out he was a carrier. Of course he was. ‘Don’t believe in Santa Claus. ‘Carry Coronavirus. That’s ‘Kids Today’ for you. So what with my Asthma and Diabetes it’s touch and go, they tell me. I’m really not bothered one way or the other - Touch or Go. If I do get better they’ll only have me in Headfield Lodge again trying every trick in the book from chat to pills to electric. Maybe he did me a favour - flobbing at me like that.

I should have worn a mask, I suppose. But I didn’t think it would look right with the rest of the Santa outfit. It would have spoilt the effect.

I don’t blame him - the little lad. After all, this last year has taken its toll on all of us, hasn’t it? Mental Health wise, I mean. Who knows what kind of problems he might have? What he had to put up with during his stay at home during Lockdown? I mean, what kind of kid in his right mind spits in Santa’s face?