On the Way to Bethlem by Judy Mitchell

‘It was about 3 o’clock when he knocked on my door. Decked out in clothes I had never seen him in before and I would not have known him if I had passed him in the street. Believe me Sir, he was all smiles and nods and made such loud exclamations of the season’s good wishes that my wife and I were quite lost for words.

He insisted on joining in all our games and when they were over, he bade us start again and there was no denying him. Each winner of our parlour games was rewarded with coins and his generosity became almost embarrassing. When someone suggested singing carols around the hearth, he joined in with such gusto. His tapping feet, tripping around the piano, and his fingers drumming on its lid, meant that our attempts at singing in harmony at which, even if I do say so myself, we have become quite accomplished, were quite drowned out by his excessive enthusiasm.

I have given him the same chance each year, Mr Cratchit. Every year I have tried to persuade him to join us on Christmas Day and, despite his rudeness and rebuffs, I have not been put off. I tried again only yesterday. You were there and may have heard me.  I would never have thought he would turn up on my doorstep today in such spirits. His last words to us were his promise to drop in to see us in the New Year. Can you believe it?  Such a change in character!  It has left me worrying that he has lost his senses. My wife suggested I should come here without delay to check if you had seen something of this sudden change in him? What could have possibly brought on this excessive frivolity in the space of only one day? Yesterday he was telling me that I should be boiled alive with my own Christmas Pudding!  Times many I have listened to his response of “Bah Humbug” to my Christmas greetings. I am quite at a loss and fear that some dreadful disease has entered his brain. I have nowhere else to go, Mr Cratchit. There are no relations I can turn to. As you know, Marley, his partner, has been dead these seven years. What am I to do?  Is it to be Bedlam for my poor, old uncle and a strait waistcoat to contain his exuberance, perhaps?’ 

The nephew shook his head in disbelief and the clerk’s eyes grew wider at each sentence describing his employer’s transformation. But it was the implications for the business and his own livelihood that made poor Cratchit share with the young man, the strange events of earlier in the day and his own suspicions about the mystery benefactor.

‘Sir, I feel it only right to acquaint you with an equally bizarre tale of receiving a gift this very morning when I was at church with my son, Tim. It seems that in my absence, the Poulterer’s man, Joe Miller, came here by cab, in which was stuffed the largest prize turkey you ever did see. Poor Mr Miller was forced to hire a cab to see it safely delivered. There was no one to help carry the monster and he had been about to close the shop to go home for his dinner when a boy came from your uncle with the instruction that the prize bird was to go immediately to Camden Town to this house.

Well, you can imagine my poor wife’s surprise! She thought it must be a practical joke knowing that making any such gift would be quite beyond the habits of my employer, your uncle. Besides Sir, we had a goose cooked and steaming in the parlour - a little on the small side, I grant you, but quite sufficient for our needs. It seemed that the Poulterer’s man was under instruction to not divulge the name of the purchaser but he let slip the name in his haste to convince my wife that she was not to be accused of theft or foul play.

There was no turning the turkey back and it has squatted in our parlour since this morning like some monstrous potentate ready to gobble up my children who are terrified that it will squash them to death. I am sure it could never have stood on its own legs and it is too plump to be cooked at our house and possibly too big to enter the ovens at the bakery without some serious butchery. 

I have never had anything from your uncle before, Sir, indeed he is loath to even grant me today as a holiday. We have been most concerned that there is some unfathomable reason for such generosity.  Now, listening to your account of his time with you, I fear we must mark him well and you may wish to secure the services of the doctor if these symptoms persist. Shall I call on you tomorrow evening, Sir, to report on how I have found him?’

The two men parted, each reassuring the other that there was no cause for alarm and that there would be some perfectly rational explanation for Ebenezer Scrooge’s change in habits.

 

The clock had already struck the hour when Bob Cratchit woke on the following morning and threw the blanket off his feet and rushed to wash in the cold water. Even by running all the way, it was quarter past the hour before he could see his workplace across the Court in the distance. He tried to dart across the road but was halted by the rapid approach of a Hackney, travelling at some speed in the direction of Southwark. As the cab drew level, he gasped as he saw ten, bony fingers gripping the cold metal bars and above them, a familiar, white, gaunt face stared out from the carriage window, its wild expression that of a lunatic.

It was more than eighteen minutes after his appointed starting time that the clerk hastily sat on his stool and picked up his pen, not daring to look up and fearing the worst. Then, as he paused to dip the pen in the ink on his desk, he turned towards the Counting House. 

On the stool where Ebenezer, the grasping, covetous, old miser had sat for decades, was Fred, the nephew. A look of smug satisfaction spread slowly across the young man’s face. With a sense of horror, the clerk realised that the ghostly features of the tormented man in the cab told a story of deceit, wickedness and incarceration, perpetrated by the nephew on his uncle who, at that very moment, was hurtling along the London streets on a journey to Bedlam from where there would be no return.