A CHRISTMAS TALE IN 25 PARTS: PART NINE

We’re going to introduce a new character here, but don’t worry, he’s not that significant to the story and you won’t need to remember his name for future reference, even though, as we all know, nobody, but nobody should ever be considered to not be “important” enough for our consideration.

I mention this only because I don’t want you thinking “Who the hell is that?” and feeling the need to flip, or scroll, or whatever it is that you do in order to read these pages, back through the days to find out who he is. He has not, as far as I’m aware, been mentioned before and, at the time of writing, is unlikely to be mentioned again, but every story needs its catalysts occasionally to drive the plot along, and, in Norbert Flipperty, we seem to have found our man.

Norbert hadn’t, in fact, been all that pleased to be invited to the fund-raiser. He had a deep suspicion of any party that was likely to end up costing him dearly despite whatever “fun” it was that he was supposed to be having and, to be honest, knowing Mr Snatch even as little as he did, he knew that the definition of “fun” on display wasn’t all that likely to resemble his own bizarre preferences in that department.

Nevertheless, he and Mrs Flipperty had resigned themselves to attending almost as soon as the little blue cube had danced out of the envelope and, after forking out some considerable sums for the new outfits and all of the necessary accessories, they had miserably climbed into the hired limousine and bickered their way all the way to the SnatchCon Tower before fixing their grins into position somewhere around about the thirteenth floor as the elevator shot skywards in anticipation of depositing them in his idea of hell.

After they had gone through what he always thought were the massively misnamed “social niceties” they had joined the gushing throng as they mingled their way around the crowds of the great and the good, all of whom, Norbert realised, were lacking in anything he might associate with greatness, and none of whom, as far as he coud remember, were any good at anything.

His wife, of course, had been in her element, and had abandoned him within seconds to go and try and impress several of the people whom Norbert had always found the least impressive, but who seemed to possess some kind of “magic” that drew people towards them and allowed them to be raised up upon empty pedestals which seemed to mean very little if you actually thought about it.

Norbert, as his wife was constantly telling him, thought that he probably thought about things far too much.

Not really knowing what to do with himself without having his wife next to him to do all of the talking, he absent-mindedly picked a glass of something sparkling from one of the passing faceless waiters and drifted off in search of a quiet spot where he hopefully wouldn’t draw much attention to himself.

This meant that he had been perfectly positioned to witness the end of Olive’s humiliating encounter with Mr Snatch. He had, of course, been appalled, but, as with most people of his kind, stood there feeling slightly awkward and asking himself  “Well, what could I have done?” whilst realising that an already dreadful evening had suddenly got far, far worse.

Feeling a slight sickness building inside his stomach, perhaps as another small link in the chain he was forging in his life was added, he drifted off as far as he could from all of the unpleasant bustle and hustle of the event, to give some thought to the unpleasantness, but also to help him to try and forget that it had ever really happened.

Happily, or at the very least, in an effort to make himself feel slightly less miserable, he found himself a quiet window to look out of. The views across the city always soothed him, despite the usual wobbliness he felt at the higher altitudes, because he could at least look at the city without having to participate in the danger and the squalor that it brought along with it.

In an unconscious imitation of what his host had so recently also been doing, he rested his forehead against the glass and felt its coolness soothing him, and closed his eyes. Consequently, he almost completely failed to notice the strange thick fog which swiftly moved in to surround the building and envelope it almost completely in its opaque ghostly greyness.

Had he been aware of it, he might have returned to the fray and sought out his wife, assuming that she hadn’t already discretely sloped off into a quiet office somewhere with somebody equally awful, and suggested that the gathering fog might be as good a reason as any to make their excuses and leave, and their overheard conversation might have found more and more of his fellow party guests asking about the worsening weather which would, ironically, both broken the ice and drawn him more successfully into the social intercourse, but also been the very catalyst which brought the entire party to a premature conclusion.

So it was that, because of his distraction, he also failed to witness the sudden chill which descended upon the crowds of guests anyway, which we might have to put down to the change in the mood after they had witnessed their host’s general air of unpleasantness. The change of the atmosphere in the room was palpable and, within minutes, several of the guests had made their excuses and left, and once the drizzle of departures had begun it became a deluge and, well before it had ever started, the party was well and truly over.

This meant that when Norbert did finally open his eyes again and became aware of the thick fog which was, as far as he knew, blanketing the entire city and beyond, his moment to shine had already slipped away from him and when he did finally track down his wife as she exited from a particularly cramped looking storeroom whilst straightening her hair, his chances of finally having found a useful opening gambit in his lifelong quest to improve his pathetic attempts at small talk had, once again, come to nothing, and, as they sat in silence in the back of their limousine after another unsuccessful night out, you could have cut the atmosphere between them with a knife.

Old Marley, of course, had had an awful lot to do with this, not that any of the guests would have noticed it, but the old reprobate would have been amused (had his living body ever been capable of such things) at all those terms like “air” and “atmosphere” being used to describe a party when it was the very air that he was manipulating, and, after expending a great deal of energy that it quite surprised him that he still had, he finally had Mr Snatch all to himself.