Chapter 6: Pre-Christmas Ball

Come the Saturday evening and we all prepared for the Ball put on by Father and Mother Christmas in the Main Hall behind their residence.

All my family and friend Sati’s family all thought that Junior’s father Santa and Junior’s mother Hilde were utterly charming when a line of us guests at the Ball were presented to them as well as conversations full of wit and charm throughout the evening, and no-one believed me when I privately called them the Grumpies. Sati particularly thought I was being extremely unfair after meeting them twice in their two visits here and being utterly overcome by their practised charm offensive.

Even my mother, who had been there last year, when Mr and Mrs Santa were demonstrably less than happy about our wedding taking place in front of their disapproving eyes, thought that Hilde was a delightful Mother Christmas.

There was a sit-down meal first before the actual Ball, held in the same large dining hall I remembered from Christmas morning breakfast last year. After dinner we moved through to the ballroom where, for the first couple of hours the elf band played mostly music from recent children’s movies and encouraged the children to get up and dance until they were too exhausted to go on and the elf nannies took them all off to bed, leaving the rest of us to enjoy more traditional fun dancing like the “gay Gordon’s” as well as waltzes and more formal ballroom dancing.

Junior was naturally an excellent dancer, having learned most of the traditional ballroom dances during the 1930s and 1940s as a child and throughout his youth, often staying with his grandparents in their Georgian period house in the Cotswolds. Georgianna was also a keen and excellent dancer, while Old Nick was surprisingly nimble on his feet for such a large man and he had the stamina of an ox, still dancing with gusto while younger men faded. uncle Henry was made of the same ilk and could dance all night. Mind you, dancing with the gorgeous Regency beauty Georgianna would invigorate an Egyptian mummy.

It was after a strenuous string of dances that I sat one dance out while Junior went to get some refreshing fruit sorbets for us, that Hilde approached me.

“Oh, hello, Hilde, how are you?”

“I am very vell, daughter,” she said with a slight bow to whisper in my ear, “I vunder if you could valk with me for a few moments? I have something I vant to show you and share viz you.”

Before I even stood up, she was on her way walking towards the nearest exit to the ballroom. I followed her. To be honest, I still feared her a little and thought I better go with her as asked and that Junior probably wouldn’t mind finding me gone and having to eat two ices instead of one.

Although she had never done me any physical harm, other than try and break my heart, by luring her son away from me with the offered charms of the beautiful Beata, but this was her home. The North Pole was like the kingdom of which she was the queen and I was merely a guest, with an open invitation to come here merely by dint of being her one and only son’s wife, and she probably preferred to treat me as only ‘the current wife’.

Besides, if she was going to be violent towards me, I though that I could take her. I was fit and 30 and she was at least 120, although she did look lean and mean and fit, with a slightly longer reach than I, but hey, I thought I was prepared and ready to fight dirty and was sure I could take her down.

I followed almost by her side, or at most just half a step behind her as she darted down corridors, turning in different directions so that I soon completely lost my bearings. We eventually stopped before a thick, antique-looking door, with door furniture that looked way out of keeping with the rest of the other doors. Slightly breathlessly, she took a key out of some hidden pocket in her sheer silk evening dress and turned the key in the lock, which operated the locking mechanism with a sharp reassuring click. The door opened to reveal a set of steps going down. She clicked a switch on the wall and the stairway was lit up with a low wattage bulb that cast a dusty glow over the rough stone walls and paved risers heading into the blackness below. The overhead light dimly showed up a turn in the steps to the right about a dozen or so steps down. It looked to me like the stairway was leading down to a cellar or basement.

“Where are we going, Hilde?” I asked, “to a wine cellar?”

“Not a vine cellar, although zeez have been used in ze past for storage of all manner of things, but recently ze atmosphere down zere ‘as changed and ze elves do not go down here no more.”

Hilde led the way and walked down the steep and narrow depth steps, using a rope fixed to the wall helping her to keep balance. I followed, after pullimg my full-length gown up far enough to see where I was putting my feet with one hand and gripping the rough rope fixed to the wall as hard as I could.

“I don’t know if you know, Jennifer, but ze elves ver here long before St Nick and although zey are happy to serve Christmas in partnership viz us, zey ver once the slave servants of an older race who lived here before us, and zay ver not happy back zen. Zeez cellars ver vunce level with ze ground level und ver vhere ze Old People vunce lived.”

We turned the corner on the stairs, leading to a further flight of steps continuing down into the gloom. When we reached the bottom, Hilde turned on another light switch and a few old fluorescent tubes spluttered and buzzed and lit up a large chamber, not a completely open space, but with huge arched stone pillars holding up the floor about six or seven metres above our heads, the pillars cast deep shadows, making the area look and, I had to admit, feel very spooky. I kept getting the irrational impression that something malevolent and resentful was lurking behind each dark arch or pillar and getting ready to pounce if I got near enough.

“No vun comes down here any more, und vhat was kept here haz been moved avay, but zis vos vunce ver ze Old People lived before ve came.”

“What happened to them?”

“As soon as St Nick and his wife and young family came here, the elves welcomed zem viz open arms und ze Old People vos driven out by ze elves und ze Christmas Magic. Only zer ghosts still populate zeez places ... und fur zee last fifty years I’ve been feeling zat zay are wanting to come back. Ve don’t vont zem, ze elves don’t vont zem and I vanted you to feel ze atmosphere here und I vont you not to vont zem back eivver. Zey are bad people, devils, and zay vill do very bad things. It’ll mean ze end of Christmas.”

“I feel it too, Hilde. Yes, I agree, I don’t want them back either. The North Pole is full of light and happiness, this place where I feel their presence is dark and malevolent, evil even. Give me the light and the laughter upstairs any day.”

“Nick und Junior don’t see any danger, Jennifer, but I have felt it more today zen at any other time, perhaps it is a reaction to all ze strangers you brought here today.”