Albert eased his cold, aching bones into the embrace of his sleeping bag, stuffed old newspapers in around his toes, shucked his collar tightly around his chin and prayed for no snow. The freezing wind coming off the Taff was already flecking his tattered ginger beard with the icy remnants of his wet breath and inserting itself between the flaps of his hat and his ears.
Lucy, his half-breed whippet and collie, curled against his body and he pulled the over-blanket he wore as a cape during the day tightly over her body, affording them both a shared warmth.
“Don’t know we’re going to get much sleep tonight, Lucy girl,” he said to her, “got a feeling, like.”
Lucy nosed his face, her sad brown eyes seeming to say, “I love you, Albert”.
“Yeah, I know,” he said back to her, “I love you too. One day things will get better and it’ll be all fields, ice-cream, sunshine and bones.”
He said that to her every night, a promise to himself as much to her. Albert was full of promises, he made so many there was little room in his thin body for anything else and he filled that room with trivia.
Every day he would spend an hour in the library, which was all they would allow. In that hour he would learn a piece of information of no use, but simply amused him. Today he learned Venus is the only planet in the Solar System rotating clockwise. He tried to picture it in his mind: the Earth going around counter-clockwise, Venus the other way. “Madness,” he concluded, “the days would go backwards.”
He knew it worked differently, because for a street person, his knowledge of celestial mechanics was second to none, but it amused him to think like that.
He looked up from his bench as the clock tower started chiming midnight. Lucy whimpered as he moved and he rubbed his face against her muzzle.
“Merry Christmas, Lucy,” he said, “May your days be merry and bright.”
He looked at her and choked slightly. “And may all your Christmases be white.”
Albert Handsmann DPhil closed his eyes and hugged his dog closer as the first drops of snow started to fall, then sleep took him and he dreamed of steaming baths, hot meals and warm beds. Around him the treetops glistened, while excited children listened for sleigh bells in the snow.
Tim Slater found them as he walked his dog; stiff as slabs of meat in a butcher’s freezer. He prodded the body with his stick, then fumbled for his mobile as snow fell from Albert’s still features. The old man smiled back at him, a curious look of contentment on his frozen face.
Somewhere, an excited young voice shouted across the fields, “It’s Christmas!” and music rang out from an open window.
Snow is falling
All around me
Children playing
Having fun
It’s the season
Love and understanding
Merry Christmas everyone