A phantasmagorial christmas story about two estranged Victorian brothers who have not spoken for half a century despite living in the same house...and their long dead sister. Here is the opening;
Have you ever eaten chocolate under seawater? My friends, this is a very human tale that I am about to tell thee. It is a story, most sadly, told only once a year and I am much sadder for that. Despite my curious opening expression though, it is an ordinary story and I am sadder for that too.
However, as it is Christmas Eve, time is not my friend tonight for the day we have been looking forward to is nearly upon us is it not? Given this traditional occasion, I will start in the time-honoured manner. Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then I will begin. Once upon a time, in a place that includes where you are now, there were once two brothers...
With one of Mr Bunty's porkiest of large, 'good-will' pork pies resting inside his plump round belly, Mr Edward Kent exited from The Merry Horse, a fifteenth century ale-house of above average reputation, tugged his Herring-bone dark tweed coat and scarf respectively around his chest and thick neck, smacked his top hat so it fitted tighter over his pink dome and squarely faced the dark and oily yellow fog which enshrouded London. On toes yet to be blessed and roasted, he began the journey back to his house by Clerkenwell, East Central on Christmas Eve in the year of our Lord 1881.
He was a stout, barrel-bodied fellow, with a pair of pale green eyes, ears full of white hairs and no neck at all to speak of. A broad set of whiskers which, from the moment he set foot upon the pavement, began to accumulate dampness by virtue of the fog, encapsulated his entire face giving him the timeless look of an earthbound Santa Claus. His bright rosy cheeks and deep, but kindly, booming voice, once you had heard him, did nothing to dismiss this observation either.
Nearing retirement age and with three brandies warming his blood, an 'after work' extravagance, he squinted and scented his way myopically through the warren of dark skeletal passages and streets known locally as little England. His principal form of illumination, for the gas had not yet been lit, was offered by occasional candles which flamed in side windows and which temporarily illuminated the murkiness as he moved ever on leaving a swirling trace not bright enough even for an angel to follow.
His solid white cane impatiently tapped the buildings on his left as he stuttered along, his mind the hub, on no one person, item or place. He had been walking the same journey at the same time for forty-eight years and it was safe to wager that his polished and clipped brown boots knew the way.
So on he slipped and stumbled through the freezing gloomy evening in silence, his hesitant footsteps tapping while the occasional Christmas carol entered his ears from places warmer than where he was, physically if not spiritually. A stranger or a companion would have certainly heard him muttering to himself as he whistled his way along the slender pavements.
However, although the substance of his journey was akin to a well-oiled machine, his cane certainly was not. It was too bright, too new, too fresh and certainly did not match the dress of the fellow driving it. There were no bruises, no marks of battle, damage or grime. Although it was a few months old, even a clever observer would not have been able to gain much information even if he had been allowed a closer examination of that particular piece of oak.
For much of his sixty years he had witnessed the folly of the unfortunates of London. Their joy, cruelty, pain and love. As he had lived, breathed, worked and grown old, he had seen Saturn's brutal death and its opposite, sweet life born, acted noble and pitiless in turn and seen seasons born and die like men. A never-ending social merry-go-round.