When What To My Wondering Eyes Should Appear

You think Christmas is only for children? That is what
old Jim Hadfield thought too and as he was to discover,
it is simply a matter of never losing sight of what
Christmas intrinsically means and what magic exists
still, in those remote places holed-up between fantasy
and reality, hope and disillusionment.

Jim dreamed – just like everyone else. He recalled
bygone days when he would leap from his bed Christmas
mornings, a flushed and excited eight-year old, taking
the stairs two at a time on his descent to the lounge-
room. Pushing wide the door respectfully, a trait often
exhibited by only-children, you could have lit-up a
thousand cities from the glow on the youngster’s face
as he gazed in awe at the presents piled up around the
tree.

Jim’s parents had never been what you might call well-
heeled, yet they had ensured that at whatever cost,
their little boy would remember the happiest of
childhoods, most especially during the Yuletide season.
Their efforts had paid-off handsomely.

Marrying in his mid-twenties "for better or for worse,"
it had proven most definitely the less desirable of
those two options. Cathy, fundamentally was a bitch. He
remembered back, not long before his mother’s death in
fact and how she had more or less laid that particular
fact out for him.

His father had died years earlier and had been spared
the worry of his son’s great unhappiness. All Jim had
ever done was to love his wife unconditionally and in
doing so, managing somehow to overlook her selfishness,
emotional detachment and cruel insensitivity. For
thirty-four years Cathy drove, while he sat out life in
the back-seat!

Bereft of meaning, the marriage had produced two
daughters equally bereft of paternal interest and
consideration. Perhaps genetically influenced, both
girls from their teenage years onwards found a plethora
of reasons not to be home, staying either with
girlfriends or maternal relatives. Of little concern to
Cathy, it simply afforded her more time to spend in
front of the television.

The few times Jim tried to talk to either girl about
their school-work, their futures, even the most mundane
of topics…it was obvious, they had little need for his
input into their lives….that having ended one might
conclude, with Cathy’s abrupt announcement of her
subsequent pregnancies.

After a while he left them to their own intractable
devices. Both girls left home soon after completing
school and their finding local employment. He saw them
perhaps once a fortnight, usually when they came to
visit their mother.

Jim would console himself some nights recalling the
Christmases when they were yet children and the
pleasure he had gotten in recreating for them what
still stood-out so vividly from his own past. How had
everything gone so wrong? he mused. All he had ever
wanted was to love…and be loved!

**

Many years passed. Cathy had died of kidney disease,
his daughters had married and moved away to the north
of England. A postcard from Marion in the late eighties
had put him on notice that he was now officially a
grandfather. He had seen the lad but half a dozen times
since, the last being when his daughter called in at
the local hospital briefly following his triple-bypass.

**

He was in his sixty-fourth year now and living alone in
a shabby semi in Portsmouth, the area’s solitude
matching his own bleak and wind-swept life. Still, he
took pleasure in wrapping-up during the wintry months
and spending hours on the seafront, looking out at the
gray Atlantic, perhaps sensing in the uncompromising
and harsh environment, a kinship somehow with his own
unstinting tidal existence.

The one thing that adverse circumstance had failed
miserably in trying to dull or nullify in Jim’s life
however, was December the 25th. Each year he would
decorate the little tree using the same tinsel and
colored balls he had so religiously protected and
stored away following his parental loss. Within the
limitations of his meagre savings, he would even buy
himself a few presents to be religiously wrapped and
placed beneath the tree on Christmas Eve.

To the outside world that year, it was an elderly and
rather melancholy-looking gentleman that took his time
wandering around the stores, picking up and studying
the latest toys, deriving tactile pleasure from simply
holding the many items that represented those seasonal
childhood yearnings.

Occasionally he would smile as he held aloft a doll or
a farm animal. Mothers would glance at him warily and
shepherd their youngsters into the adjoining aisle.
They could not know that inside that tattered old coat
and scarf, an eight-year old child looked out at his
beloved world of remembrances.

In Brackensfield’s, one of the largest Department
stores on the east-side, the newly installed Santa was
entertaining a long line of expectant children as their
mothers jostled for the dubious privilege of parting
with six pounds 75p in exchange for an instant photo of
their loved one/s posed on the man in red’s knee.

No one noticed the lonely old figure standing alongside
the racks of games nearby, watching the awe-struck
children as they progressed excitedly along the queue.
The moment they had to relinquish their mom’s hand and
take that last step up to that lofty perch. The
encouragement to smile for the camera and then finally
those few words with Santa himself. Unseen also, the
occasional yet involuntary tear trickling down the
man’s cheeks.

He stayed until the last child had scampered back to
his mother and the helpers were hanging up the sign
which read "Santa has gone to feed his reindeer and
will be back at 6 p.m."

For a moment he was lost in his own thoughts.

"It means a lot to you doesn’t it?"

The words jolted him upright. Kindly eyes considerably
older than his own even, looked down at him.

"I was just remembering," he half-stammered and
feeling not a little embarrassed.

The eyes smiled. "Ah, the memory of happier times
perhaps?" Then after the briefest of pauses, "And what
then would you wish for yourself on this cold Christmas
Eve?" came the question from deep beneath the bushy
beard.

"That’s easy, " Jim responded. "I’d wish that for just
a few hours even, I could spend time with a young lady
who might love me for simply myself. Someone I wished I
could have met when I was young and had a future."

The hand caressed the white moustache. "All of us have
a future my friend. It’s just a matter of recognising
when it actually started! We must enjoy the
opportunities that come along and for some of us," he
looked at Jim almost sympathetically, "such times may
be of regrettably brief duration."

Smiling now, he took Jim’s hand. "Well now, a very
merry Christmas to you Sir. I must be going. Those
reindeer of mine are eating me out of house and home."

Jim watched as the tall figure disappeared around the
sporting aisle and decided to head home. Although not
snowing, it was icy cold outside and he was looking
forward to the familiarity of the snug confines of his
little home. Perhaps he would indulge himself with a
small bottle of brandy, after all, Christmas was but
once a year.

**

Entering the small latched gate that opened upon the
narrow crazy-paving pathway that led to his front door,
he felt upon his forehead first one, then another touch
of crystalised cold. He looked up. The weather bureau
had been right for once.

For only the eleventh time since the turn of the
previous century, a genuine white Christmas had been
predicted for the south of England. He watched for a
few moments, the sporadic flakes as they eddied
silently downwards, not yet in sufficient a flurry to
lay the groundwork for their heavier relatives.

The front door closed behind him, sealing off once more
his own little eco-system from the withering elements.
Everything was as he had left it. The tree over by the
small French doors, those ancient but so well-loved
glass balls reflecting the small lights as they winked
on and off – tiny beacons of cheer in a room of such
gentility and misplaced affection.

Beneath the lower branches upon the threadbare carpet,
four neatly-wrapped presents lay clustered there. So
sad their message of loneliness, yet so inspiring a
tradition of hope and goodwill. Jim knelt down and re-
arranged them as he liked to do occasionally. He had
long since put out of his mind what they contained and
was rather looking forward to the morning’s
discoveries. He allowed his fingers contact with some
of the long strands of tinsel.

It took no effort on his part to recall his mother
kneeling there beside him, showing an eager son how to
hang them properly. Closing his eyes, it was her
fingertips he now felt, her breath that perceptibly
disturbed the symmetry of those lower branches.

The plummeting outside temperature was more than enough
reason to light the fire in the open hearth that he had
earlier prepared. He knelt there watching as the
embryonic flames consumed the kindling, giving them
sustenance to take-on the challenges of the thicker
wood above. Within ten minutes the hearth was ablaze
with pyrotechnic good cheer and Jim began to set
strategically in place layers of coal that would keep
the entire house warm during the night.

There is something intrinsically magnetic about an open
fire. A lifetime’s thoughts and recollections can pass
in an instant watching those glowing embers, the small
pockets of gas igniting within the lumps of coal and
the curious behavior of those tiny flame-creatures as
they scurry along the base of the conflagrated logs.

Jim walked over to the small but serviceable
kitchenette and cooked himself a couple of pork
sausages with potatoes and mixed vegetables and with
the small room at its optimum temperature now, he
watched on television, as he had done every successive
Christmas for as far back as he could remember –
Miracle on 34th Street.

Some years it was A Christmas Carol, but always one or
the other. The brandy saw admirably well, to his
transition from well-fed comfort to yawning tiredness.
The last thing he did was to lay out a final layer of
coal before drawing the fireguard across in front of
the hearth.

He was aware of the old clock in the lounge-room
striking, having listened to its comforting message of
hourly regularity since he was a small child.
Subconsciously he realised it was midnight. It was the
other sound however that had him struggling between
wakefulness and confused unreality.

It’s repetition brought him fully awake. Someone at the
front door? His front door? It was only the lightest of
knocks.

It would have been hard to tell what shocked him more.
The inbound blast of freezing air with not a few
flurries of heavy snow or the young girl standing on
his doorstep shivering there, in just a thin dress.

"Could I come in for a few moments please, I’m lost."
was all she was able to mutter.

The girl was in the last stages of hypothermia to judge
by her color and aggravated shaking. Flakes of snow
covered her shoulders and long brown hair. He did not
fail to notice how pretty she was either and the
likelihood that she was surely no more than sixteen
or seventeen. He pulled her gently inside and closed the
door.

"Good heavens child," he said, propelling her gently
towards the fireplace. "What on earth are you doing
walking around the streets at this time of night…and
with no warm clothes."

"I…I don’t remember," she said, crouching down near
the hearth and holding her freezing arms out to the
resuscitating warmth. "Something happened and I had to
leave….that’s all I recall. I don’t even know this
place!"

Jim selected a few small logs from the pile nearby and
tossed them on the fire ahead of some more coal to
bring up the level of flame.

"Are you hungry missy?" he asked. The girl looked-up at
him and nodded shyly.

"Well you just stay there love – get yourself nice and
warm and I’ll fetch you something to eat," he said to
her.

As he pottered about in his little kitchen alcove
tossing some bacon and eggs into a frying pan, and a
couple of pieces of bread into the toaster, he looked
back at the girl.

Obviously benefiting greatly from the warmth of the
fire, she looked back at him once or twice, smiling and
quite obviously at ease in his presence. Looking at her
delicately formed body hunched up there on the floor,
he realised he wasn’t yet too old to recognise the
physical attraction of one so young, despite the
obvious futility of such recognition.

"What about a mug of hot chocolate to be going on with
love" he enquired, turning the eggs as he did so.

"Oh, yes please," she answered gratefully, hugging
herself around the knees as she sat there, seemingly
entranced by the flames. Little wispy clouds of steam
were rising from the sleeves of her dress and he
realised that besides being half-frozen to death she
must have been soaked through from the melting snow-
flakes. She sipped her hot chocolate delicately.

By the time he took out the tray of hot food to her,
the color was back in her cheeks and she was altogether
a healthier-looking proposition to the freezing and
bedraggled young thing that he had first ushered across
his minimally populated threshold.

He had wanted to ask her all sorts of questions but
thought better of it, preferring to watch as she
relished the simple but satisfying meal he had brought
her.

"What’s your name miss?" he found the courage to ask
her.

"Cassandra," she replied, but most people call me
"Cass, or Cassie." she added, looking up at him between
mouthfuls.

"Well, I like Cassandra," he told her, "If you don’t
mind I’ll call you that – it’s a lovely name….for a
lovely young lady, if you don’t mind me saying so." he
blushed at his own words and she caught the color
rising in his cheeks.

"You’re a little shy with girls aren’t you?" she asked.
"Oh, and you haven’t told me your name either, have
you?"

"Ohh, sorry…no I forgot," he muttered. "I’m Jim…just
old Jim!"

"You’re not that old," she observed with a commendable
degree of tact

"Ah, but I am Cassandra," he smiled at her wistfully.
"Way too old I’m afraid."

"You’re a very kind person, I know that much," she
smiled up at him. "A girl knows instinctively who she’s
safe with and who she can trust."

He was watching her now, noticing just how young she
was, the beautiful unlined face, blemish-free skin,
slim girlish figure that promised more than he dared
remember. He wondered how he must look to her? Never
realistically having been even "handsome" in his youth,
his skin was old and sagging in places now – all the
wrong places at that!

Beneath his eyes, his jowls, around his considerably
expanded and flabby waistline, even the tops of his
gnarled old hands were wrinkly, the veins standing out
like speed-humps gone feral. Liver-spots were starting
to make their presence known and to describe his
hairline as receding, would not begin to recount the
cranial carnage wreaked over the past twenty years.

Reduced to a few white hairs, those currently on-site
presented themselves as little more than a ruffled
patchwork at the best of times. As if subconsciously
aware of his hirsute shortcomings, he ran his hand
across his head suddenly, flattening a few rogue
strands.

"Well to me you’re not old Jim... just a really nice
man," she smiled up at him sweetly as she finished her
food, offering him up the tray.

Her words touched him and quite without any logical
reason, he wanted to put his arms around her and hold
her tight... the daughter he had never had… the wife he
had never known….the lover he had so futilely longed
for. Instead however, he simply took the tray and
trudged back to the kitchen, aware for the first time
since he had let her in, how additionally grotty he
must appear to her in those tatty old pyjamas and
dressing-gown he was wearing.

Seemingly reading his mind, she called out to him,

"Jim, come and sit beside me in front of the fire for a
while."

Not even questioning why she would ask such a thing of
him, he shuffled back to the fireplace and eased
himself down beside her. For a while they both stared
into the dwindling flames. He noticed now the little
silver chain around her neck and the tiny locket that
she seemed to be holding for comfort as she sat there.

"That’s a very pretty little treasure," he said to her.

Looking at it for just a few moments she smiled back at
him. "Yes, it was given to me by a very dear person. It
means everything to me."

**

Now her immediacy was affecting his judgment and he
took her hand in his. "May I please?" he asked, looking
at her delicately shaped hand resident now in his own
palm, "Only for a moment Cassandra... I just want to
remember what it feels like... it’s been such a long
time."

Whatever response he had been expecting, he was not
prepared for that which he received, as she leaned
across and kissed him softly on the lips. It was not a
long kiss but in the three or four seconds contact he
was treated to a kaleidoscope of emotions. Shock,
pleasure, embarrassment, disorientation and not the
least – arousal!

Pulling back, but still holding the girl’s hand, which
for some reason was recalling impossible memories, he
was momentarily lost for words.

"Y-you shouldn’t be doing that," he stuttered.

"Why not?" she said, looking as cute as a button, "I
wanted to! Didn’t you like it?" she teased, then
looking serious for a moment. "You have been very kind
to me. I just wanted you to know I really appreciate
it.

As she was speaking, he found himself studying her
closely once more. The little wisps of brown hair
curling around her earlobes, the almost unkempt locks
that fell across her forehead and which jiggled as she
emphasised her point. Her pretty and expressive little
face without a trace of make-up, not that any could
possibly improve on what nature had already set in
place. Despite her youth, something about her was
bordering on the old-fashioned.

Perhaps it was the dress. Although well fitting –
especially so he noted, in areas he hardly dared
contemplate – the hemline was longer than girls her age
tended to wear and certainly was without any mainstream
appeal so far as he could judge. On her though it
looked perfect and he found himself wishing he could
hold and caress something other than her hand.

A log suddenly crackled and the girl started in
surprise. He took the opportunity to put his arm around
her shoulders hoping against hope she would not react
unfavorably. How he wished it was a young arm and not
that of an old man that carried now the fully
unrealistic hopes of its owner.

Far from rejecting the gesture though, Cassandra
snuggled in to him.

"You make me feel safe and protected," she whispered,
turning her head slightly. The movement caused her
dress to gape slightly at the front and for a moment he
saw the onset of the downward curve of her cleavage.
She had fairly small breasts he had determined and
again inexplicably, something of a hazy remembrance
came to him. She was saying something to him. It surely
couldn’t be what his mind was hearing?

"Kiss me again Jim, please," in that instant he fell
apart emotionally. With what would appear to any
onlooker to be the sad, if not pathetic spectacle of an
old man trying to resurrect his forgotten romantic
habits, he pulled her back until she lay in his arms
and lowered his mouth to hers. Soft, gentle and
confidently pliant lips met their coarse, trembling and
long-since used partner’s. As both the beauty and
hideous reality of the interaction washed over him, he
was unable to prevent the tears building up.

"I’m so sorry Cassandra," he cried. "I don’t know
what’s come over me. I’m just a really lonely old man
and... and well, you’re just so pretty..." He was
wracked in an agony of despair.

She smiled at him.

"You’re not an old man Jim….you never were…..Look,
see!" So saying, she held his hands up before him.

Unable to accept what his eyes would have him believe,
he stared at the strong and well-shaped hands. No hint
of a wrinkle. Wide wrists heralded the onset of
muscular arms that disappeared up beneath the sleeves
of his old pyjamas. He had no need of a mirror, he knew
his face was that of a young man. He could feel the
weight of thick and luxuriant hair which even now
curled almost to the nape of his neck.

He sought not to question this miracle, merely to
address its purpose.

Carrying her later to his bedroom where neither the
crumpled bed linen, nor the faded and decrepit
wallpaper held sway any longer, he laid Cassandra on
the top sheet. Turning away from him she sat up and
raised her arms. Gently he unzipped the dress and
watched as she pulled it over her head. She wore
nothing beneath.

Such was her beauty he could but stare. She took his
hand and brought it to her breasts where he gently
caressed first one and then the other while she held
his gaze and murmured the sweetest of soft little
sounds. He marvelled at the perfection of her curves
and the effect his touch was having on her nipples as
they hardened rapidly.

Her needs mirrored his own and he found himself
kneeling beside her on the bed, drawing down on her
nipples gently until she lay back, her arms above her
head aroused now to the point of moaning softly and
needing his full complicity in what ultimately was to
follow.

For a few moments he could do no more than look at her
as she lay there completely at ease with him in her
nakedness. The smoothest triangle of dark curls framed
her exquisitely beautiful lower lips that he permitted
himself the luxury of exposing further by gently
parting her legs a little. She gave the smallest cry of
anticipation, yielding up the most arousing expression
of girlish tease as he hardly dared to push a finger
inside her. Her look then of complete satisfaction as
he pushed in deeper – her eyes were liquid in their
need.

"Make love to me," she barely whispered.

He found disrobing in front of her, an act easily
effected without the slightest inhibition. He
remembered then, how it was something neither he nor
Cathy had ever been comfortable with. He couldn’t
recall ever actually seeing her fully naked – nor
having the desire to.

Allowing him to spread her as far as he wished, she
closed her eyes and wriggled her hips enticingly as he
entered her. Making full use of his restored and
youthful physique, Jim thrust hard into her – not with
any semblance of distasteful force but rather, one of
masculine dominance at a time a girl might
understandably wish to be dominated.

As his rate and depth of entry increased, Cassandra was
willing him on, raising her hips to meet his thrusts
and experiencing in full, the pleasure they were so
deeply sharing. He knew there was no expectation to
observe any modicum of restraint on his part and this
alone propelled him to greater heights. Cassandra was
shaking her head from side to side now and completely
given over to the forces in play.

"Make me pregnant Jim," she pleaded, the utterance of
such words having anything but a passive effect on her
super-heated partner. A lifetime’s unfulfilled sexual
needs can understandably generate an impressive seminal
build-up. How lucky the recipient one might muse.

Cassandra was not complaining and as he pumped that
very last cubic centimetre of procreative fluid deep
inside her, she was transported way down her own Yellow
Brick road courtesy of a multiply connected orgasm that
to quote John C. Fogerty was a case of "Rollin’,
rollin’, rollin’ on the river."

While still yet dizzy from their joint exertions, Jim
pulled Cassandra up to a sitting position and kissing
her, whispered to her softly. Compliantly, she turned
around and getting down on all fours presented her
lover with a cute little bottom of such arousing an
aspect he first kissed her there several times, causing
her to gasp and to wiggle her rear-end in evident
pleasure. At the point he knelt behind her and took her
in that same position – she was experiencing
considerably more pleasure.

After their frenetic early needs subsided, Jim lay down
behind her, pulled her close to him and pulled the
bedclothes over them. Cassandra with her back to him,
pulled his arms tightly around her breasts and lay
still, listening to their respiratory rates even out
and feeling his sperm deep inside her still. She didn’t
want to think about having to leave or about what she
knew had shortly to be.

All Jim was able to think about was by whatever
miracle, an angel had been delivered to his door this
night. He would worry about an explanation in the
morning. God willing he should never lose her again,
yet somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind he knew
he had experienced these thoughts some time in the
past.

**

An old man woke Christmas morning. His cries of anguish
at his loss would have melted the heart of the least
compassionate of men.

"How could a dream be so real? How could any God be so
cruel?" were just two of the questions he suspected he
was never likely to be receiving an answer to.
Determined however that nothing would ever undermine
his love of the festive season, he decided he would
first make himself a pot of tea and entering the tiny
kitchen he had to grasp a hold of the door-frame to
steady his nerves…if not his sanity. Sitting there on
the bench was the tray, containing one dirty plate with
traces still of bacon rind and a small yellowish stain.

Struggling to make sense of the non-sensical, the only
rational explanation in his view was that whilst in a
semi-delusional state, he had actually cooked that meal
last night….and presumably eaten it. He made his pot of
tea and whilst waiting for it to draw, went to the
front door and opened it. Snow must have been falling
all night. The front path, grass and flowerbeds were
now but a uniform white blanket, the trees - icy
sculptured sentinels. All around, picturesque serenity,
a silent white matte-work.

Returning to the living room, he went across to the
little tree – and stared! Five presents now sat in a
cluster-pattern beneath those lower branches, one far
smaller than the rest, slightly away to the right. The
wrapping looked faded but again, somehow familiar. As
he picked it up he felt a decided chill.

His hands trembled as the little heart-shaped box was
exposed. It looked quite old. Removing the lid, he saw
what was inside and his world spun away. Shaking
fingers opened the tiny silver locket, and with tears
of passion raking his cheeks, he read what he already
knew was so minutely inscribed there.

"To Cassandra from your loving husband Jim. Christmas
1832"


(c) Peter_Pan 2005 http://www.geocities.com/worldofpeter_pan/intro.html

This story is taken from the anthology "Imagine For A Moment" available at:

www.lulu.com/content/69187