One of Those Things
By Ed Wood
Copyright 2011 Ed Wood
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
George had not yet fully understood that his daddy would never be coming home. It was a difficult concept for a six year old boy to grasp.
As he stood with his mummy, holding her hand tightly and listening to The Salvation Army Brass Band play Oh Come All Ye Faithful, he remembered Christmas times gone by. His daddy had always enjoyed walking through Plymouth city centre during the run up to Christmas. He liked to see the coloured lights sparkling in the trees and on the lampposts. He liked to buy mulled wine from the wooden shed that had cotton wool on the roof instead of real snow. And he liked to stand for a while on the corner of New George Street and Bedford Way to listen to the brass band. ‘It’s not properly Christmas until you’ve heard the band,’ he always told George, who he carried effortlessly on his broad, bony shoulders.
Once, last year perhaps, he’d started to cry and George had asked him, ‘Why are you crying, daddy?’
‘Absent friends,’ he’d replied, as he dropped several heavy coins into the plastic collecting tub.
When George had told his mummy that he wanted to put the pocket money he’d saved up into the plastic collecting tub this year, in memory of his daddy, she had hugged him very tightly and cried for a very long time. ‘That’s a beautiful idea,’ she had whispered to him, once she had stopped crying.
She squeezed his shoulder gently and George stepped towards the lady in the bonnet-style hat and thick woollen coat. He held out the carefully folded twenty-pound note he’d exchanged at the bank for all the coins in his piggy bank. The lady stooped down to make it easier for him to put the money in the tub. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get the note to go through the slot.
‘Christmas is such a magical time, don’t you think?’ she whispered to him, smiling.
A sudden gust of wind snatched the note out of his hand and all the dead leaves lying here and there on the floor were lifted into a swirling vortex around his head. He watched with horror as his note disappeared with the leaves into a crowd of Christmas shoppers. Their arms were full of bags and boxes. But not one of them looked happy.
The note had not meant to blow away. It was one of those things that can sometimes happen. When it reached the sundial, it turned left and blew past the temporary ice-rink and through the German market towards Royal Parade.
At the pedestrian crossing, people jostled for position on the edge of the pavement as they waited impatiently for the green man to release them. The note blew between their legs and out into the middle of the road. A car ran over it and it stuck to one of the tyres. But it was soon blown clear, becoming snagged on the blue metal railings that separated the streams of opposing traffic that moved in waves up and down.