BLOGPOST SEASONAL SPECIAL
A SHORT STORY PUBLISHED BY THE DERRY JOURNAL, 16.12.2016 ©Dave Duggan
JOEY'S DIGITAL CHRISTMAS
We were
looking at the lights on Shipquay Street when Bridget said it. The
white lights stretched across the road, like silver waves on a starry
blanket. It was the Saturday after Bridget finished the tests. I knew
she was going to pass them and go to the school she wanted. She has
Mary, her mother's, brains. And my looks. Hah!
Mary got a
couple of late care shifts at Culmore Manor and there's no way she
could say no to them. Since we took the mortgage on the wee house, I
don't know, it's all go, all go out the door and gone, just as soon
as we get it.
So I had
Bridget up the town to look at the lights, because she's past twelve
now and she knows there's no Santa, but Christmas still has to mean
something.
Bridget
pointed at the lights and smiled.
“It's
Christmas, Daddy. Really, like.”
I didn't
know was it really. I want things to be better for Bridget. We both
do, Mary and me. We called her Bridget because its an old name in
Mary's family, rooted in us, like. We only have the one wean. With
the way we are now, we're just as well off.
We have a
tree right enough. I always get one. I do a few weeks in the forest
at the back of Galliagh with Barney Goodman and he gives me cash, an
armful of holly with fiery red berries and a small tree in a pot. I
put it in the yard, almost black, like, the green so dark, soaking up
the rain and spiky as a hedgehog. Barney knew my father. I get a few
jobs from him. In December with the trees. In March with the lambs.
I'm kind of in between the town and the country. I don't know where I
am, like.
Bridget
and me stopped at Shipquay Gate and looked back up to the Diamond.
The lights swayed in the breeze, like stars sailing. She was smiling
again. I could see her teeth, dainty and white. The Guildhall clock
chimed five chimes, loud enough to chase the pigeons from the city
walls. They flew over our heads and scattered up and beyond the
lights and then vanished.
“I'd
love a computer, Daddy. For the Christmas. But there's no Santa, so
…”
She left
it hanging, not like a request, no, definitely, not like a demand,
not even a plea or a prayer, more a statement, no, more a wish, like.
Bridget
was asleep by the time Mary got home after midnight, her ankles
swollen and bags under her eyes, the same eyes as her daughter, only
with grey embers in them. I made her tea and toast and told her
Bridget wanted a computer for Christmas. She stopped chewing the
toast and put the cup out of her hand onto the floor beside her. When
she looked up again, there were tears in the ashes in her eyes.
I got her
up to the bed then. She pushed her feet down to the bottle I put in
earlier and she gave a sniffle and smiled. We do our best to manage
the oil. We're not poor. We're not at the food banks or anything. We
just never seem to be far off it, with the bills, like.
I heard
Mary's voice in the dark, when I turned off the bedroom light.
“We have
some stuff for her, Joey. A computer? That's hundreds of pounds.”
I'd been
watching Match of the Day. I usually like it, only that night it left
a sour taste in my mouth, because all the talk was about money, not
football, all about the value of players and the wages they were
getting, thousands every week, like, not one word about if they were
any good or anything.
Me and
Bridget brought the tree in the next day. We let Mary lie on. The
tree made the room smell fresh and clean and country. I nearly lost
it with the lights, all tangled up, but not Bridget. She just stayed
calm and untangled them, loop by loop, coil by coil, then laid them
out along the floor and plugged them in to light up the carpet in
tiny blue and red flames and she smiled and said “Da dah” like a
magician. I hugged her close and thought what could she not do if she
had a computer.
I said it
to Mary, when she got up and before she went out to work again and
she warned me to not be thinking about getting into debt, because,
and she's right, we'd end up losing the house and what would a
computer be to Bridget then, but I said she'd need it in the big
school and Mary left in bad form, which, I know, isn't good. She's
right in what she says, but. She knows the ones who call round here
and give you a loan at your own front door and they only want an arm
and a leg and any self-respect you have as interest on it, like.
When
Barney Goodman phoned and said he had three days work for me, lugging
furniture, I said yeh straight away. I mean, in the mouth of
Christmas, who's going to say no? Barney owns things. Like the bit of
land and forest. A van and a small truck. Sheep for lambing. Hens for
eggs. We're only starting to own things. The car. The wee house. And
we don't really own them. The bank does. Barney can take on jobs and
move people out of this big house, under the new bridge, at the end
of its own driveway, six bedrooms and two garages, with the doors
going up and down on a remote.
The first
day we lifted the furniture and took it to a lock-up in Pennyburn,
not too far away, while two other fellas boxed stuff up and brought
it to the front hall. The man who owned the house came on the third
day and took two bags of decorations, baubles and lights and tinsel,
like. He told Barney to take another day, if he needed it. I was
carrying a box marked with a big X and when I put it on the ground,
beside other boxes marked X, the man opened it and looked inside for
a long time, then he turned to me and said
“You
give them the best ye can, eh.”
Barney
says the man and his wife are decent people, just caught in a bad
situation with money they're trying to sort out. Barney told him he
wouldn't need another day and your man nodded and smiled. Barney
reckoned he would get more work from him in the new year. No point
bogging the arm in now, like, it being Christmas and all.
When the
man left, I looked in the box and, even though I know nothing about
computers, I knew there was some kind of laptop, in an aluminium
case, a white keyboard, two white speakers the size of milk cartons
and a black flat thing like a wallet and cables and connectors and
plugs.
Barney
said to put the boxes with Xs on them in last and we'd take them to
the dump on the way to the lock up.
I stood a
minute and thought about Bridget and her voice with the wish in it
and the way she got the lights working, then I took stuff out of the
box, the obvious computer things and a few other items I didn't
really know what they were, but they seemed to be part of it, then I
got a black bin liner and Barney gave me a hand to fill it, saying
“You
going all digital now, Joey?”
All I said
was I hadn't a clue about any of it, but Bridget wants a computer
and, I don't know, just.
Barney
said he'd give the bag to his Michael, who does nothing 24/7 only
computers and see if there's any good in it. Better than it going to
the dump, like.
That's how
we got a computer for Bridget for Christmas. Michael put it together
and I picked it up on Christmas Eve. Me and Mary put it all in a big
box and wrapped it in paper with spangling stars. Bridget opened it
on Christmas morning, on the ground under the Christmas tree, lights
blazing blue and red, her eyes shining bright as any diamond. She
figured it out herself. She said we'll have to get broadband and Mary
said we'd go about it in the new year, because she can see the good
in it and that's all we want for Bridget. Even though we're just
getting by, we're doing our best, fighting the bills, like.
We watched
the telly later, me and Mary. Bridget was busy with the computer,
connecting it all up, taking it apart, connecting it again and
working it out, like an engineer she was, and just then, after the
dinner and all, with the lights blinking on the tree and Mary snoring
gently beside me on the sofa, me with a cold can going down on a
belly full of food, I got the notion that this was what Christmas was
really about. The bit a' plenty and sharing it around so everyone
gets a fair portion of it.
© Dave
Duggan December 2016
Dramatist
and novelist Dave Duggan's latest book is RELATED LIVES – an
imagined memoir (Guildhall Press, ISBN: 9781911053163), available
from bookshops, including Little Acorns Bookstore, tel. 07776 117054
and via Amazon, in paperback and on Kindle.
www.facebook.com/DaveDugganWriter
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