Giving Santa a Hand, by Roddy Doyle

I woke up and heard something. I woke up because I’d heard something. There was someone at the end of my bed. I looked without moving my head from the pillow. The bedroom door was open but there was no extra light coming in from the hall.

It was my father at the end of the bed – I knew his shape. I heard something else now, a clinking kind of sound. I knew what it was, even though I couldn’t see much. It was the bike I’d asked for, from Santa. My father had leaned it against the end of the bed; a handlebar had hit the metal frame.

My father moved to the door. There was another shape there now. My father whispered – I couldn’t hear the words. The shape whispered something back. It was Santa – it must have been. My father was giving Santa a hand delivering the presents.

The door closed.

It made sense. If I’d been Santa and I’d needed someone to give me a hand delivering the presents to the houses in Kilbarrack, I’d have asked my father. He was always making and fixing things; when he said he’d do something, he did it. And he was funny. He’d built the crib in the hall, with the Jesus and Mary and the cow in it. He’d built the extension in the back of our house. And, anyway, he already knew Santa.

Every year, before Christmas, he came home from work and he took the letters we’d written to Santa and he went over to the fire with them. My mother made sure we all stayed well back – me, my brother, and my sisters. My father got down on his knees and shouted up the chimney.

– Are you there, Santa?

The big deep voice came down the chimney.

– Yes, I am.

It was Santa, up on the roof. He’d been waiting for my father to come home from work. He’d probably seen him parking the car.

– I’ve got the letters here, Santa, my father shouted up the chimney. – Are you ready for them?

– Yes, I am, Santa shouted back. – Send them up.

You could tell they knew each other.

My father’s back blocked our view of the fireplace but we could see his hand reach up the chimney with the letters, and come back down without them.

– Did you catch them, Santa?

– Yes, I did, said the deep voice. – Goodbye!

Now, I lay in bed. My brother had stayed asleep. It was just me. My first bike was waiting for me. The bike was going to make my world a bigger place, although I didn’t know that yet. The library in Baldoyle would soon be mine. And the wooden bridge in Dollymount. Saint Anne’s Park. The beach in Sutton. The graveyard in Donaghmede. The quarry in Kinsealy. The mink farm behind Swords. The images and smells and sounds that I still take out and use.

I was ten that night – I think. I'm fifty-five now and my father is eighty-nine. I've never told him that I saw him that Christmas Eve, giving Santa a hand. I've had children of my own; I know the rules. He'd have to deny it. December 2013. Roddy Doyle's father Rory died last March.

[ libertiespress.com ]

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