The Night Before the Christmas Before I Was Married & Other Festive Tales Read Online Free
Author: Adam Maxwell
mirrored by two more floors of windows and skylights glinting just out of sight.
As I climbed the three stone steps to the huge door the gate slammed at the end of the path, making me jump. I turned back to the door and looked for where a bell-push might be but there was none, no knocker, no bell, just a plain black door. Realising that I would have to attract the attention of the curtain-twitcher I raised my clenched fist and brought my hand forward to make sharp contact with the wood…
“Hello. You must be the new boy,” said Mr Grimwald as he creaked open the door.
“Erm, yes, that’s right. I’m with meals on wheels, I’ve brought your dinner for you,” I replied, slightly wrong-footed by being referred to as a boy at forty-two.
“Excellent, why don’t you come inside.”
Mr Grimwald walked into the hallway beckoning me to follow. He wasn’t at all as strange as I had pictured him as I crept up his garden path. A house with such gothic sensibilities meant you really expected someone with a long, pointy nose, whispy grey hair and a faintly menacing demeanour. Mr Grimwald was the antithesis of this; a stocky man dressed in a tweed suit with a lilac cravat, who carried a perpetually empty pipe. His rosy red cheeks gave him something of a Santa Claus persona and a gap between his two front teeth that showed on the regular occasions when he grinned made him an odd but endearing old man.
After I had served up his dinner, I excused myself and returned to my van to make my way home. The inside of the house appeared to be extremely hotchpotch with items strewn seemingly haphazard on every available surface. As I closed the door of my van a chill once more swept over my body and I stared down the garden path towards the house looking back menacingly at me. I started the engine, feeling idiotic and childlike to be deriving any fear from an old house and a jolly old man.
Our meetings in the weeks that followed were brief, polite and sincere. He had lost his wife five years ago and had no family left. He amused himself with his collection of vintage posters from around the world, all framed and adorning any spare vertical surface. Here was an original Houdini, there a 1960’s pantomime, all very interesting and all in immaculate condition no matter how old and odd. However, I felt the chill again as I cast my gaze over them.
The first week of December yielded the first snow of the season lying around an inch deep but instead of putting a spring in my step it left me with an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach because I knew that this was the beginning of the Christmas season for real. People had begun to decorate their houses and I liked helping in my own little ways with the people on my round; putting up a streamer here and there, occasionally decorating a tree. It gave me a real sense of warmth to help people rather than simply feeding them which was unusual because before Meals on Wheels I always dreaded the season to be jolly. I have a theory that a person’s Christmas decorations say a lot about their personality and I was intrigued as to how Mr Grimwald would manage to fit any decorations into his already over-populated house.
On this particular round I had decided to take my dog, Sally, with me. Not so much for the company but because I knew she loved the attention of the diners and equally they loved tempting her with titbits and morsels. After a fairly uneventful round, I finally reached the corner of Battlefield Road and Mr Grimwald’s residence. Sally had become excitable, barking, whining and fretting in the back of the van so I gathered up the trays and left her in there to clam down.
“Hello again Gary,” said Mr Grimwald as he opened the door. “First snow of winter eh?”
“Evening Mr Grimwald,” I stepped over the threshold of his house just as a gust of wind punched a cloud of powdery snow into his hallway but apart from this impromptu decoration I found the house
As I climbed the three stone steps to the huge door the gate slammed at the end of the path, making me jump. I turned back to the door and looked for where a bell-push might be but there was none, no knocker, no bell, just a plain black door. Realising that I would have to attract the attention of the curtain-twitcher I raised my clenched fist and brought my hand forward to make sharp contact with the wood…
“Hello. You must be the new boy,” said Mr Grimwald as he creaked open the door.
“Erm, yes, that’s right. I’m with meals on wheels, I’ve brought your dinner for you,” I replied, slightly wrong-footed by being referred to as a boy at forty-two.
“Excellent, why don’t you come inside.”
Mr Grimwald walked into the hallway beckoning me to follow. He wasn’t at all as strange as I had pictured him as I crept up his garden path. A house with such gothic sensibilities meant you really expected someone with a long, pointy nose, whispy grey hair and a faintly menacing demeanour. Mr Grimwald was the antithesis of this; a stocky man dressed in a tweed suit with a lilac cravat, who carried a perpetually empty pipe. His rosy red cheeks gave him something of a Santa Claus persona and a gap between his two front teeth that showed on the regular occasions when he grinned made him an odd but endearing old man.
After I had served up his dinner, I excused myself and returned to my van to make my way home. The inside of the house appeared to be extremely hotchpotch with items strewn seemingly haphazard on every available surface. As I closed the door of my van a chill once more swept over my body and I stared down the garden path towards the house looking back menacingly at me. I started the engine, feeling idiotic and childlike to be deriving any fear from an old house and a jolly old man.
Our meetings in the weeks that followed were brief, polite and sincere. He had lost his wife five years ago and had no family left. He amused himself with his collection of vintage posters from around the world, all framed and adorning any spare vertical surface. Here was an original Houdini, there a 1960’s pantomime, all very interesting and all in immaculate condition no matter how old and odd. However, I felt the chill again as I cast my gaze over them.
The first week of December yielded the first snow of the season lying around an inch deep but instead of putting a spring in my step it left me with an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach because I knew that this was the beginning of the Christmas season for real. People had begun to decorate their houses and I liked helping in my own little ways with the people on my round; putting up a streamer here and there, occasionally decorating a tree. It gave me a real sense of warmth to help people rather than simply feeding them which was unusual because before Meals on Wheels I always dreaded the season to be jolly. I have a theory that a person’s Christmas decorations say a lot about their personality and I was intrigued as to how Mr Grimwald would manage to fit any decorations into his already over-populated house.
On this particular round I had decided to take my dog, Sally, with me. Not so much for the company but because I knew she loved the attention of the diners and equally they loved tempting her with titbits and morsels. After a fairly uneventful round, I finally reached the corner of Battlefield Road and Mr Grimwald’s residence. Sally had become excitable, barking, whining and fretting in the back of the van so I gathered up the trays and left her in there to clam down.
“Hello again Gary,” said Mr Grimwald as he opened the door. “First snow of winter eh?”
“Evening Mr Grimwald,” I stepped over the threshold of his house just as a gust of wind punched a cloud of powdery snow into his hallway but apart from this impromptu decoration I found the house
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