Chapter 4: Preparations

“Gronwynk, are you here?” I called out as I opened the kitchen door of our log cabin at the North Pole and kicked the white snow off my boots outside.

The cherry red and cheery face of the chief Christmas house elf came into the kitchen from the hallway with a big smile.

“Miss Jennifer, you’re here already, where’s Mr Junior?”

“Oh, he popped into the Big House to pay his respects to his parents, and I wanted to come home and get the hot chocolate going on the stove. Probably a little rude but I don’t want to spoil a single moment of this weekend. I suppose I’ll see them sometime over the next couple of days and lots of times in December. The elves at the stables told me that you’d brought a sleigh down here earlier and weren’t expected back until late.”

“Well, I wanted to welcome you to your new home and get the bed linen aired in here and in the guest house chosen for your friends and have a last minute dust round both places. Did you manage to bring your guests?”

“We did. They are a little awe-struck, being their first time here and I left them with Junior, because they all wanted to meet the man Santa himself. I only hope he behaves himself and doesn’t frighten them off.”

“Oh, don’t worry about Young Nick, he may be a grump most of the time to all of us who’s used to his manners or lack of them, but he is very different around visitors, he’ll put on a show full of bonhomie and plenty of ‘ho-ho-hoes’ and they’ll love him to bits, you mark my words.”

“Well, so long as they are impressed, I can put up with his rudeness towards me, I’ve come to expect it.”

“It won’t last forever, Miss Jennifer. He’ll be a different person as a grandfather. Now, did you want to check out the guest cabin? I’ve already gone through it with a feather duster.”

“No, if you are happy with the guest house, then so am I.”

“What was the trip like? Oooh, did you fly the plane all the way here yourself?”

“I did, and I was senior pilot with Junior as co-pilot, because I got my wings this time last week.”

“Congratulations, Miss Jennifer, and I see you must have driven a sleigh down here on your own too. You know, you’ll soon be regarded by us elves as a North Pole native.”

“Now that I’m here, Gronwynk, I do really feel at home. I love this little group of disused cabins you pointed out to us, they are intimate, warm and welcoming and a great place to bring family and friends to.”

“And your friend Sati, she is your best friend, isn’t she?”

“Yes, we worked together for seven or eight years and she made life for me in the big city at least bearable. I was young and bold when I went to London all on my own but I soon found it frightening and lonely. We both worked part-time at this telesales centre, while I was a student and Sati transitioning between full-time mum and the children starting school. Sati as a friend meant safe advice and stability in my uncertain existence.”

“You are so brave, Miss Jennifer, I would be shaking like a candle flame in a snow storm if I ever left here, away from my husband, my sisters and my children, I would certainly not leave them willingly.”

“You have children?” I asked. She looked a mature elf but being a housekeeper of a huge house, I never really considered she’d have her own household to manage as well.

“Three, a boy and two girls, all grown up now and married. My son is a stableman and my daughters make toys, though they work in different workshops. I am actually a grandmother twice over and my youngest daughter is expecting her first in February.” Gronwynk’s pointy ears pricked up. “I hear sleigh bells, I think your guests are just arriving.”

“Wow!” I responded, “that must’ve been a very quick audience with The Grumpies. Damn! I haven’t even started making the hot chocolate drinks yet.”

“I’ll do that for you Miss Jennifer. Now, get off with you and go greet your guests and show them around their log cabin. I’ll bring the drinks and some stollen over to their sitting room when the drinks are ready.”

“Thank you, Gronwynk, you are a treasure.”

I met our guests at the large barn we used as a sleigh garage and stabling stalls for the reindeer, where Junior had just pulled in.

I super hugged Sati, followed by a quick hug with her rather reserved hubby Sanjay then a double hug with Kirron and Satish, who, at 17 and 13, I had known for more than half their lives, even though I’d only missed them for an hour or so since we arrived in the land of Father Christmas, the fabulous North Pole.

Now Sati has to be one of the most beautiful women I have ever met. Her face is absolutely flawless, her skin a light brown looking as if she was just back from a sunny holiday, slim built and elegant, she moves just like a dancer. Her face is wide, open and usually smiling, her teeth both top and bottom are brilliant white and impossibly even, her lower row always in view when she talks but when she smiles her mouth shows off both rows in a quite dazzling spectacle of cheerfulness. Her eyes are so dark brown in contrast to her white schleras that you could lose yourself into the depth of them. Her face is framed with long jet black hair that starts out straight but develops waves as it tumbles halfway down her back, brushed until it seems to not only shine but glow with an inner light. Personality wise, Sati talks all the time; I’m naturally quiet, so when we are together she hogs 80% of the conversation, but involves me all the time even if my responses are usually so short. She smiles constantly and working with such an upbeat person really helped me through all those years in London when I now realise I was probably borderline clinically depressed most of the time.

She is British Indian by definition, and proud both of her Indian sub-continent heritage and her home country. Her grandparents fled the Punjab state during the violence following Partition of India in 1947 at the very end of the Raj, they were introduced and married in New Delhi. Both were from similar well-off farming and food manufacturing families, were well educated and when their marriage was arranged they were attending different universities, one as a doctor, one as a teacher. They had Sati’s mother in India in the late 1940s before they moved to England, and settled in Wolverhampton in the early 1950s. Sati was born in the late 1970s to both British Indian parents, so she speaks English very well, with a charming combination of slight Brummie and Indian accents.

Her husband Sanjay is like me personality wise, naturally shy and quiet, and when he does speak it is with emotional conviction and a very deep bass voice. He has a naturally long face with a high forehead and big nose. In repose his face looks quite lugubrious, which is probably a good look when, as a general practitioner, he has to give you bad news about your back pain or confirm your worst fears, which may well compare with what you looked up online for your symptoms before being forced into booking an appointment with your doctor. However, when he does relax in company he is comfortable with, and finds something funny, Sanjay does have a nice smile and when he laughs it is without reservation. Born in India, Sanjay has spent roughly half his lifetime in London, understands and speaks English quite well, although he still retains a noticeably strong Indian accent. As a couple I know that they love each other very deeply. An arranged marriage, that they didn’t themselves have any say in except to accept their parents’ choices. They met for the very first time just before they married, but gradually fell in love in their first year together and the arrangement has worked out well for them over 20 plus years.

Sikander is their eldest son and he has just started Med School in Edinburgh about two or three weeks earlier, which is why he was not with us on this weekend, his family’s first visit to the North Pole.

Kerron is a smaller version of Sati, only with bigger browner eyes in her elfin face and I’m sure she would be a sensation as the romantic lead in Bollywood movies. However, even at the tender age of 17 she says she is not remotely interested in dating boys and is determined to devote all her time to study to become a dedicated veterinarian in the future. Boy, you should have seen her when she saw the reindeers in the North Pole Airport stables, she was absolutely beside herself with joy. It turned out to be a lifetime obsession with the beasts.

Satish is the youngest, at 13 he seems to always have his nose in a book, although nowadays that has largely been replaced by a tablet. Sati tells me he is apparently a whizz at mathematics, not just the common or garden counting stuff that I do on my fingers most of the time, but super equations working out distances and movements of stars and galaxies and thing is space that are there but can only be “seen” through complicated equations. Satish is a walking brain box, but he is also cute and alive to his surroundings.

Of course, all of them were bowled over by what they had seen on their first visit to the North Pole and, I imagined, it must have been quite a culture shock.

“Well, what did you all think of our trip and arrival?” I asked as we sat relaxing in the comfortable sitting room of their cabin in front of the roaring pine wood fire, drinking our rich local cocoa, “Was it a shock seeing the elves for the first time? And what did you make of meeting the big man Santa himself?”

Sati spoke first, holding up her hand to the rest of her family as she could see the kids were itching to speak. “This whole day has been absolutely amazing, ever since we got up this morning, packed and made our way to the City Airport in London. We’ve flown as a family lots of times before, as you know we go back to India for at least a month every two years or so, but I’ve never been on such a smooth check-in procedure before, and it was very smooth, wasn’t it Sanj?”

“The smoothest, it was like we were being treated as Royalty,” Sanjay smiled.

“Really, we were,” Sati took up where she left off, “then we were led up the steps into the smallest jet we’ve ever seen and welcomed in the entranceway by Junior. Only then we found out that we were the only passengers on this jet plane. Normally, we taxi for ages and wait for clearance before we get underway, and already suffering from the congestion and anticipation of a day’s weary travel ahead of us. But, no sooner had Junior seated us in that spacious and comfortable passenger cabin, and moved through the curtain to the front, and there we were rolling down the runway and taking off. Then your voice came over the tannoy telling us you were the chief pilot and hoped we were enjoying the experience so far and asking if we’d like to look around the cockpit. And then we were up in the air and you left Junior flying the plane to come back and show us around the rest of that luxury aircraft.”

“I loved the bit where you showed us the cockpit,” Satish couldn’t hold himself back any longer, “and we found that Aunt Jenna and Uncle Junior were flying the plane, it was so cool, wait till I tell my – oh, wait, I can’t tell any of my friends about this, can I?”

“No, Satish,” I replied, “no matter how hard you try, you cannot tell anyone, ever.”

“That’s all right,” he said, “I mean, if they knew this was real they’d all freak out, right?”

“Yes, they would Satish, and it was very clever of you to realise that this has to be kept a secret.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t tell any of the guys at school. For one thing they wouldn’t believe me and secondly, I think it is really cool that I know something that they don’t know and will never know, that my aunt and uncle, who is virtually ‘family’ through friendship, are one day going to be Father and Mother Christmas, I mean, wow!”

“Yeah, Aunt Jen, my friends would also totally freak out if they somehow found out about this and then they would definitely treat me differently,” Kerron noted, “not different in a special way but just I think I would be challenged by every new and existing relationship now and in the future, you know, thinking is this person being negative to me because I freak her out in a bad way, or are they trying to get closer to me hoping that I will somehow get them an invitation or some kind of benefit from their knowledge? No, secrets like this are best kept secrets.”

“You probably know as Hindus that we have our own festivals around this time, like Diwali now and a mid-winter festival called Makar Sankranti that falls in January,” Sanjay said. “I’ve lived in London for more than half my life, only a few of my patients are Hindu, most are white Christians and we are bombarded with Christmas advertising –”

“– and me being born in London to British Indian parents and being in a minority going to English schools with mostly English children,” Sati said, “we could never avoid Christmas, so we do buy into all the carols, evergreens and cards as it is so much part of British life at home. But, of course, we never had a clue that this place actually exists, that there really is a Santa and everything else that goes with it and that we actually met The Father Christmas himself, in person. This is definitely magic with a capital M.”