What We Must Not Tell Uncle Chris

Author’s Note. I apologise to those who wince at a Christmas story in summer, but it came to me the minute I saw the prompt, so I hope I’m forgiven!

“Can you keep a secret?” It was the question all of us children at Trefoil Farm, my big brother Callum, my little sister Janice, and me, Susie, the one in the middle were all asked when the appropriate time came. 

     It was not a general or generic question, and not a theoretical one. It concerned one specific secret. It was what we must not tell Uncle Chris. For his sake, and probably for all our sakes. 

     It was the seventies, and Trefoil farm was down a long lane in what Dad, only half-ironically, called the wilds of Lincolnshire. Though it kept the name of farm, it hadn’t been a working farm for decades and Dad was a vet. I expect that (and I swore I’d never use that phrase!) children nowadays would be surprised at just how sheltered or isolated we were.

     But I must not give the wrong impression. Trefoil farm was no strange, menacing, secret little commune, but a happy family home for Mum and Dad, and Uncle Chris, who wrote children’s books, and Callum, Janice, and me. We had electricity (well, most of the time) and running water (unless the taps froze) and a TV – a large, big-bellied black and white one, and Dad had a car. Mum and Uncle Chris could both drive, and Dad always swore that Mum was a better driver than he was, but the large, squat, grey estate car was always Dad’s Car. Janice and Callum and I went to the village school, unless the track was snowed up, and we went on holiday every year. Even then it might not have been exactly a normal childhood, but it was by no means the stuff that Gothic novels and misery memoirs are made of, either (and by the way, I have a weakness for the former and sympathy for the authors of the latter!). 

     Of course there was the usual unwritten assumption of not having favourites but I flattered myself I was Uncle Chris’s favourite. We were all keen readers, but I was generally accepted as the family bookworm and though they might not necessarily have been my favourite books (which I didn’t tell him, because it would have been unkind, but that wasn’t what we must not tell Uncle Chris) I enjoyed his tales about the Elves of The Eaves, about a race of little people who lived in the roof of a house. It wasn’t based on Trefoil farm, and I knew there was no point in looking for Elves in the Eaves. Dad said it was based on a cottage where they had stayed when they were little. Uncle Chris was his younger brother – the younger by seven years. There was a sister in the middle, Auntie Kaye, who was very stylish and brought us nice presents, but she lived in London and we didn’t see her much. I once heard her say that she thought the what we must not tell Uncle Chris business was silly, but Mum gave her one of those looks. And when Mum gave you one of those looks you knew about it. Our parents were both pretty lenient, we were never spanked and rarely shouted at, but Dad had a tone of voice, and Mum had a look, that kept us from running wild! 

     I had a spell of struggling to find a word to describe Uncle Chris and finally found it, accompanied by a helpful illustration, in another book. He was spindly. He was, in fact, slightly taller than Dad, but it often seemed as if it were the other way round, and as if a breath of wind might blow him over. In fact, we knew this wasn’t true. If needs must, he could help out on the outside jobs with both strong arms and a willing heart.  Like Dad, he had curly black hair and green-grey eyes with a look that could be mischievous one minute and far away the next. Callum and I favoured that side of the family, while Janice was fairer, like Mum.  Uncle did not exactly go to extremes, taciturn one day and garrulous the next, but he certainly had his quiet days and his talkative days. He wrote his stories in a succession of variegated notebooks, and then typed them up himself on a massive manual typewriter that was probably old fashioned even then. He was a good typist, and not what Mum, who had been a secretary, dismissed as a “Two finger jabber” . I liked the rhythmic sound of him tapping away at his typewriter. 

     It was easier so long as Janice didn’t know, either. But last year she found out – from someone at school, and she swore it was no big deal and she more or less knew anyway. But when Janice knew – it could be awkward. Now I loved my little sister dearly, and she didn’t have a mean bone in her body and wasn’t a tattle-tale, but as Mum had once said, she had a mouth that tended to go in its own direction. “Does Uncle Chris REALLY not know?” she asked her, her eyes saucer-wide. “Have we ever told you a lie?” Dad asked, firmly. In the circumstances, perhaps that was a someone unfortunate question to ask, but Janice seemed to grasp that there was a difference. 

     You see, here’s the thing. Uncle Chris believed in Santa Claus. Now you might think that was an impossibility for a grown man, in ANY day and age, even though people believe in stranger things like the earth being flat, and that sofa really having been on sale for £1,000 before it was reduced, and politicians telling the truth. And I don’t just mean he believed in a symbolic Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus sort of way.   But now I can see how it happened. He had been a sickly child, and at one point, as people put it, both honestly and kindly, in those days, it was by no means a certainty he would thrive. He spent little time at school, and was home-schooled, or had lessons with the local vicar. As Dad put it, “He was always the cleverest of us children, for all Kaye thinks she is, but though he could read ancient Greek fluently and do quadratic equations before he was twelve, he didn’t necessarily learn all there was to know about life.” The family protected him, even sophisticated Kaye, and they did know he loved Christmas. They humoured him and indulged him, and one year, when he was at his frailest, made Christmas come early. He pulled through and ended up having two Christmases that year, but nobody begrudged him them!

     Happily, he did recover from his childish delicacy, though like I said, there was always something about him that looked delicate. He came to live at Trefoil Farm, and write his books (that never became bestsellers, but ticked along nicely and, I suspect with hindsight, had more of a following amongst adults than children) and help out where he could, and be a great friend to us children. 

     He wasn’t even an especially impractical person. He could change a fuse and put up a shelf and was more green-fingered than either Mum or Dad. He had his own pet, a splendid tortoiseshell cat called Sullivan. So far as I knew, there had never been a Gilbert. Sullivan was an amiable and easy-going, if slightly snooty animal, and loved by us all, but he was still Uncle Chris’s cat. He and the family dog, a Labrador retriever of infinite patience and liquid eyes called (not very originally) Goldie, were on friendly, if somewhat distant terms. 

     There was something both laidback and structured about the build up to Christmas at Trefoil Farm. It did not, generally speaking, start in any way shape or form until December, though an exception was made if Advent came early – then it was permissible to put up decorations and play Christmas music at the very end of November. Mum and Dad weren’t particularly religious in a formal sense, but like many country people, they thought the year had its forms and seasons. Mum was a good cook and baker, but never believed in doing it for the sake of it. She made her own richly fruited Christmas cake, with a thick layer of marzipan but a thinner one of icing, but maintained that when it came to puddings, “bought” was every bit as good. And she never followed that tradition of putting the coin in. It was a rite of passage, not quite on a par with what we must not tell Uncle Chris, but still important, that as we were, in her opinion, old enough, we heard the tale of how her little sister had nearly choked on a threepenny bit in a Christmas pudding. It had ended happily, and Auntie Helen was alive and well and living in Manchester, but there are things you never forget.

     We had a “proper” tree, though every year Mum and Dad fretted and fussed about the needles, and about the risk to the animals, and we loaded it with home and school made decorations, so sometimes hardly any actual tree was visible under the angels and bells and stars, though the chocolate coins in their gold foil never made it to Christmas Day. 

     Christmas Eve at Trefoil Farm was a time of both more wonder and more worry than it was at other places.  That year we were all rather disappointed as early on in the day there had been a flurry of snow, or at least of sleet that aspired to be snow, and we wondered if there were going to be a white Christmas, but realised as it turned milder and greyer with the early sunset that our hopes were to be dashed. Mind you, perhaps it was as well, as Dad had a call-out to attend to an emergency case – Bill Stokes at Danesfield Farm had phoned sounding worried stiff and apologetic about his beloved sheepdog Morna being seriously unwell. Dad said when he got back that he thought she would be okay, but Callum and I, at least, saw the look he gave Mum that meant he wasn’t quite so sure about that. 

     With all the upset we had done the unthinkable and forgotten to put out the mince pie and glass of sherry for Santa Claus and the carrot for his reindeer! I told myself that Uncle Chris was bound to see to it, but I couldn’t settle, and I crept down to the lounge, collecting a carrot and a mince pie from the kitchen on the way and feeling as only a child who believes she is the only one awake in a sleeping house can feel. I carefully poured a measure of sherry into a little crystal glass, and wondered about being very daring and having a little sip of it, but I didn’t like the smell. It was like sweets that had gone off. 

     At first I thought it must be my imagination, but then I realised that there was definitely someone in the garden! The sensible thing to do would have been to call Mum and Dad, but I was at that stage in life when being accosted by a stranger seems far less daunting than having to admit to your parents that you had been up when you “shouldn’t.” 

     Feeling both very brave and very foolish I opened the door and went out into the garden – and I saw Uncle Chris! I knew it was Uncle Chris from the puckish smile and warm grey green eyes, but he wasn’t spindly anymore. He was transformed into someone plump and bearded and red-coated. For a split second I caught sight of Sullivan, winding his tortoiseshell form around those red-clad legs, but then, in a heartbeat, the tortoiseshell cat transformed into something entirely different, a tall, proud, yet friendly creature with doe eyes and magnificent antlers. A shining silver sleigh came to rest on the lawn, laden high with presents and brighter than the stars. As it disappeared into the infinite winter sky, the sound of laughter and sleighbells sounded, and a familiar voice asked, “Can you keep a secret?”