And Other (Christmas) Stories 5
One for sorrow...
This is a true story. In places.
NATIVITY SCENE WITH MAGPIE
It was Christmas Eve and for once I was feeling smug because I had bought everything, sent everything, wrapped everything and done everything right for once. I was the anti-Scrooge: if those three Christmas ghosts had come to my house, they would have seen the tree surrounded by presents, the lights gleaming and the fridge bulging with the ingredients for tomorrow’s Christmas dinner. Everything was ready: my wife would be back with the children and all that needed to be done was put the baby Jesus in his cradle in the – I froze. My smugness shattered like thin ice that a fat man had been skating on. The nativity scene!
I climbed the stairs to the attic and searched every cardboard box. There were used advent calendars, unread cracker riddles, festive CDs and DVDs, but no nativity set. Where the hell was it? And then – right at the back of the attic, behind a tricycle that nobody had ever liked - I saw an old sweet tin. On the lid was a Victorian street scene and inside, wrapped in tissue paper, was the nativity set.
I hurried downstairs, placed the tin on the sofa, unwrapped the figures and laid them out – and it was then I realised there was something missing. I did a quick roll call: sheep, shepherds, kings, Mary, Joseph, angel, manger, baby Jesus - the donkey. The donkey was missing.
I went back to the tin. One small bundle of tissue paper I hadn’t seen. I reached in and heard a tiny crack. Unwrapping the paper, I saw it was as I had feared. The donkey had snapped in two, its head separated from its body like some horrific festive sacrifice. This was a disaster: the donkey was everyone’s favourite part of the nativity set. It even had a name – Donkers. Not a great name, but it set the donkey apart from its nameless colleagues. Even the Angel of the Lord didn’t get a name, and he was an angel. Of the Lord.
I searched for glue, pulling out drawers and rooting through toolboxes. There was nothing but a flat and shrivelled tube of something that hadn’t been used this century. I was worried now. I had two hours until everyone returned. They would want to see the nativity scene. It was a ritual, a major part of Christmas.
In a panic, I searched through an old box of toys. There were horses, camels, elephants, giraffes and even a pangolin but no donkeys. Desperate, I wondered if a pangolin would be acceptable stunt casting for the donkey. I shook my head. I was losing it. I had to find a donkey and I had to find it now.
I left the house and walked out to the car. I was about to get in when I noticed there was something sitting on the roof. It was a bird, a large black and white bird. A magpie, I remembered. I didn’t have time to shoo it away so I got in the car, started the engine and drove off. It was a bird, it would fly away, birds do that. It wasn’t like there was a pangolin on the roof of my car.
Ten minutes later I was getting out of my car at the retail park. I was making sure I had my phone and wallet when I noticed that the magpie was on top of my car again. This time I did try and shoo it away, but the magpie didn’t move.
“Go on,” I told it. “Shove off.”
The magpie looked at me.
“No,” it said.
“I beg your pardon?” I said before I could stop myself.
“You heard me,” said the magpie. “I said no.”
I wasn’t drunk, I wasn’t medicated, I wasn’t asleep so there was only one logical conclusion: a magpie was talking to me and, to be fair, I was talking back to it. I could have spent more time thinking about it but I was in a hurry.
I said to the magpie:
“Can you please get off my car? I’m in a bit of a rush.”
“Not until you say it,” the magpie said.
“Say what?”
“You know,” replied the magpie, almost coyly. “The thing.”
“What thing? ‘Happy Christmas’?” I said.
“Happy Christmas to you too,” the magpie said. “But not that.”
I was losing my patience now. I didn’t really care if the magpie was on the roof of my car or not, to be honest, but it was the principle of the thing. Also I had no idea what it was talking about.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I told it through gritted teeth.
It gave me a pitying look.
“Yes you do,” it said.
“No! I don’t! Look, pal, all I want to do is go in there and buy a donkey.”
“A donkey?” said the magpie. “You’ll never get a donkey in this car.”
“A plastic donkey. For a nativity set.”
“Oh, OK. As you were.”
“Right, stuff you, I’m going in before the shop shuts.”
“Your funeral.”
“I beg your pardon?” I said.
The magpie was preening itself.
“Nothing, just – you know – if you don’t say the thing, then you’ll have bad luck.”
I shook my head. I don’t know how many magpies in the world and I have to get this one.
“What. Is. The. Thing?” I asked.
The magpie gave me a disbelieving stare.
“The - ” it began.
“And don’t say ‘the thing’ again,” I told it.
“The question, I was going to say,” said the magpie. “Don’t tell me you don’t know the question.”
A lightbulb went on in my mind, a dim one, the kind you put in the cellar because you know you’re not going to go down there very often.
“Do you mean – ”
“Now he’s getting it,” said the magpie, addressing the air.
“The Sir Magpie thing?”
“Mister Magpie but yes, close enough.”
“The thing where I ask you how you and your family are?”
“Wife, but again, close enough.”
“I don’t even know your wife.”
“I don’t know yours but that’s no reason to be rude,” said the magpie. “Go on, ask me. Or you’ll have bad luck.”
“No,” I said.
“What?”
“I’m not doing it. It’s blackmail.”
“How do you figure that out?”
I sighed. I really was running out of time. Also how did I know there hadn’t been a run on donkeys?
“Look,” I said. “I don’t know you or your wife from Adam.”
“And Eve.”
“What?”
“If you don’t know me from Adam,” said the magpie, “Then logically you don’t know my wife from Eve.”
“I don’t know either of you!” I shouted. “I don’t know any magpies full stop! And I don’t see why I should inquire after your sodding health just because you’ll – what - put a magpie curse on me otherwise?!”
The magpie considered this for a moment, then it nodded.
“I see where you’re coming from,” he said. “But, you know, I don’t make the rules. And if I was a boggart and I asked you a riddle or else you wouldn’t pass, I bet you wouldn’t complain.”
I didn’t know what a boggart was and I wasn’t going to get into it, so I said:
“It’s not right. All I want to do is buy a small donkey and all of a sudden I’m the official supplier of good luck to a magpie. And,” I continued, “what’s so special about magpies that you have to have your good luck topped up by everyone who sees you? Is there an actual reason for this or are you just a needy little - ”
I stopped. The magpie was looking down at the ground. Well, to be precise it was looking down at the roof of my car, but it was the same thing.
“Yes,” he said, and he sounded a bit upset.
“Yes what?”
“Yes, we magpies do need our luck topped up. Don’t you know the song?”
“There’s a song now? I mean, as well as the thing, there’s a song?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know the song. Everybody knows the song.”
I shook my head.
“I don’t know the song,” I said.
“It was a TV theme!” the magpie shouted. “It’s famous!”
I frowned.
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?”
It was the only theme song I could think of at short notice apart from Shaun the Sheep and I wasn’t singing that in a car park.
“Oh,” sighed the magpie. “You people forget so fast.”
“Sorry, I don’t know what show you mean.”
“I’ll give you a clue.”
The magpie pointed at itself. It was hard to do with a wing, but he managed it.
“Magpie!” I shouted.
“Oh, well done,” said the bird in the driest of voices. “Amazing work.”
“One for sorrow! Two for joy! Three for a girl and four for a – ”
I stopped. “Wait,” I said. “One for sorrow? But there’s only you here.”
The magpie nodded.
“Where’s your wife?”
The magpie was silent.
“You don’t have one,” I said, realising.
“I did,” he replied. “But – nature red in tooth and claw and that. Cat,” he explained.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was. “So you’re - ”
“Only lucky in pairs,” said the magpie.
I felt ashamed of myself.
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“It’s in the song,” the magpie pointed out.
“Fair enough,” I said.
I took a step back.
“Hello, Mister Magpie,” I said in a loud, clear voice.
A woman getting into a car looked at me. I think she laughed. I didn’t care.
“How’s your wife?” I said, more gently.
It felt then like the air changed, or like the wind changed direction. It was warmer, or the clouds cleared, or all of those things. It felt different.
“Thank you,” said the magpie.
“Not at all,” I said. “I meant it.”
“I know,” said the magpie. “I could tell. And now,” he went on, “I am going to give you some luck. Some good luck.”
He stretched out his wings and lifted his head up high.
“Hear me sing,” he commanded.
And he sang.
I don’t know what magpies normally sound like when they sing, but this one sang like he was addressing heaven. He sang a sad song that was also a happy song. He sang his past and he sang his present, and when he had finished singing, he said:
“Now you have luck.”
I stared at him for a moment, still dazed.
“The donkey!” I shouted, and ran into the shop.
When I came out five minutes later with the new plastic donkey, the magpie was still on the roof of my car.
“I was just waiting to see if you got it,” he said. “I’ll go now.”
“No,” I said. “Stay. I mean, come home with me.”
“Are you inviting me to Christmas dinner?”
“No, I mean - ”
“Joke. I’m a magpie, not a partridge, or a French hen or whatever. Also talking of birds, I’m not watching someone eat one, that would be weird.”
I took a deep breath.
“There’s this tree in our garden,” I said. “We get all sorts landing on it. Blackbirds, jays, thrushes. And – ”
The magpie gave me a look.
“And?”
“And the occasional magpie,” I said.
It was Christmas Day. The children were opening their presents. The nativity set had been cooed at and the smell of roasting potatoes came from the kitchen. My wife was looking out of the window.
“Two,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Look.”
She pointed. There were two magpies sitting in the tree in the garden.
“That’s lucky, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “Very lucky.”
DAVID QUANTICK 2025
.