Portobello Book Blog

Through the windows, I spot flickering candles in fir trees, brought inside after the fashion of the late Prince Albert. It looks so very odd to me. I am doubly surprised when I open the door to a snow-clad Professor Moffat one night before Christmas and he has brought just such a tree. A real, green, living tree.

‘Phineas, would you be so kind as to fetch Mr Robertson, please? I would appreciate a helping hand.’

Even Mr Robertson groans and puffs, but the tree soon stands upright in the good front room, wedged into a bucket of wet sawdust and sand to keep it fresh.

‘What is it?’ Mr Robertson’s forehead is so furrowed, I can’t help laughing.

‘It’s a Christmas tree. Watch, gentlemen!’

‘Christmas tree,’ mutters Mr Robertson, shaking his head.

Merriweather Moffat reveals a small paper parcel and carefully unfolds it: inside is a strange collection of metal clips. ‘Like this!’ he announces as if he had invented the custom himself. ‘Clip it on, Phineas, so the round part faces upward.’

Ah, I see how it is meant to work. I fix my first clip on.

‘Very good – now, distribute them evenly, that’s right. Do you see, Mr Robertson? Alice, don’t you love it?’

Mrs Moffat stands in the corner of the room, clutching a pack of wax candles. ‘I do love it, dear. Who would not?’

‘Then place the candles in! No time like the present! Professor Moffat’s cheeks glow with excitement.

The street lamps outside are lit by the time we finish. Mr Moffat strikes a match and lights the first candle.

I am not sure what I expected. But maybe not the pleasant scent of a woodland, right in our home. The light of thirty candles, dancing and reflecting in the windowpane, casting ever-changing shadows against the wall, the furniture, and our faces, too.

‘Extinguish the candles now, Alice,’ Mr Moffat says suddenly, for all of us have sunk into an awed silence. ‘We must save on the wax. We will light it on Christmas Eve. They say the Queen knows how to make merry at Christmas, and after a year like ours, so shall we!’ He reaches into his coat and brandishes a book.

‘What’s that?’ Mr Robertson asks again. He is wary of books.

‘It’s a story. A ghost story called A Christmas Carol, by Mr Charles Dickens. And those of us who can read, shall read it to the others at night. And on Christmas, we will go to church, and we shall have a goose! Isn’t that right dear?’

Mrs Moffat nods and looks at him in a way that makes me happy and sad at the same time. Did my parents ever have love like this between them? Is this what my sister, Lizzie, ran away to find? And did she find it?

I receive my first ever Christmas present. When my parents were alive, I might get a small present at Hogmanay, but never at Christmas. All these new ways. They are not the Highland ways.

But I find that I bear them very cheerfully.