Chapter 7: I Believe in Father Christmas (G is for gift giving)

"Why's it taking him so long?" Beryl fretted as she signalled Daisy and the wait staff to do another turn of the room with the food trays. Santa Claus had yet to appear.

Elsie worriedly checked her watch. Charlie had taken an inordinately long time to slip into a red costume.

"Perhaps Bill could…" She stopped short at that idea. Bill Mason was currently charming their Hollywood star. As much as Alice Neal's presence was irritating Elsie, she knew that if the woman was to leave, so would most of the other guests.

"Maybe you could go in and-"

"Me? Shouldn't we send one of the men."

"You won't see him naked, for goodness sake! He only needs to slip the suit over the top of his clothes!"

"Of course," she stuttered, handing her drink to Beryl. She continued to feel foolish the whole time she negotiated the stairs to the ground floor. She was an executive of one of England's most successful department stores. She could surely handle one grumpy man clad in a Santa suit.

Carefully weaving her way around the shop's displays so as not to topple any of them over in the semi-darkness, she tentatively called out Charlie's name when she reached Beryl's office door.

"Charlie?" she called again, and knocked for good measure when she got no response. "Can I come in? Are you decent?" she added, her face flushing again.

Before she could panic further, the door swung open. Barely acknowledging her arrival, however, Charles turned and sat back down in the chair. The chair was placed beside a table which had been shoved against the wall to make way for a stack of yet to be opened boxes of stock. She screwed her face up at a coffee cup holding a thimble full of murky brown dregs in the table's corner. Laid out also on the surface was a pile of invoices held down by a large calculator. Other stationery was strewn about; pens, rulers, and highlighters.

Charles sat in the centre of the mess, wearing the red outfit, and clutching the fake white beard.

"You're not unwell, are you, Charlie?" she asked, anxious.

"Not physically, no. But do you think… Elsie… I'm not particularly good at anything, am I?"

Elsie bit her bottom lip hard. "Whatever do you mean?" she asked. "What's gotten into you?"

"I'm an old fool... My acting career was over before it began."

She pursed her lips. The only foolish one around here was that woman upstairs, bringing back distressing memories and giving everyone an inferiority complex. Even she had been feeling frumpy and fat next to the slick star earlier, and how ridiculous was that, she thought now.

"And Granthams is going broke."

"That's not your fault! The GFC and-"

He cut her off before she could finish her defence. "Beryl is more successful than I am. She has three shops and-"

She took her turn to cut him off: "Wait a moment. This is Beryl's opening. She doesn't have any profitable stores just yet; she simply has stores." She tucked her chin onto her chest, getting stern with his display. "I wish her every success, of course, but when Copper Kettle Kitchen is celebrating its 40th year, we'll compare our situations again, shall we?"

He eyed her warily. "Acting… I was rebelling against my father. Rep theatre was as far away from working in an office during the week and playing cricket on the weekend as I could get."

She remained silent, waiting for him to finish.

"And now, I basically work in an office during the week and play cricket on the weekend. Well… Umpire these days," he added sheepishly.

She laughed, his humour a sign he was shaking off his melancholy. "Would it be so bad to be your father?"

He shrugged. "He wasn't an evil man. No beatings or anything dramatic. He was just…"

"Distant?" she guessed.

"Yes. My mother was there and he wasn't. Even though he was. If you know what I mean."

"I know exactly what you mean. Only too well."

He lifted his gaze then, his expression one of sympathy for her plight suddenly instead of sadness over his own.

"You're a good man, Charles," she whispered, holding his hand. "Now, how about you come out and show me and the crowd some of these acting skills you've kept hidden for so long?"

He chuckled and stood, dragging the hat and beard over his face, before hoisting the bag of gifts over his shoulder with a flourish.

"Has Father Christmas got a gift in there for me then?" Elsie asked as they clomped up the stairs towards the general hubbub of the party.

"No."

Elsie stopped, almost at the top of the staircase, and turned around to raise one eyebrow at Charles. As he was several steps lower, it meant their faces were almost level. "No?" she repeated with a huff, hands on hips.

"No. You, my dear, will receive your gift from Santa on Christmas Day. And it won't be some cheap trinket that's handed out as a gimmick, I assure you."

She smiled. This was her Charlie. The one whose words sounded pompous and arrogant at first, until you took a moment to really think about what he said and realised he was actually one of the sweetest men you knew.

She reached out and squeezed his hand briefly. "Oh, and by the way, you're particularly good at quite a few things, Charlie. Perhaps I'll ask Father Christmas to gift you a list," she whispered.

Taking a deep breath, Charles blinked away the tears that gathered in his eyes.

"Show time?"

He nodded. "Show time, Elsie."