A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas Read Free Book Online Page B

celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike
sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a
painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals
any color I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red
field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and
allsorts, crunches, cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the
Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if they could not fight, could always
run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little
Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make
the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his
stick to shake our picture off the wall. And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in
your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in
vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk
you ate it. And then it was breakfast under the balloons.”
    â€œWere there Uncles, like in our house?”

    â€œThere are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas
mornings, with dog-disturbing whistle and sugar fags, I would scour the swatched
town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird by the white Post
Office or by the deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men
and women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed
cheeks, all albinos, huddled their stiff black jarring feathers against the
irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all the front parlors;
there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and
cats in their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready
for the chestnuts and the mulling pokers. Some few large men sat in the front
parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying their new cigars,
holding them out judiciously at arms’ length, returning them to their mouths,
coughing, then holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some
few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat
on the very edges of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded
cups and saucers.”
    Â 

    Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always,
fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats of snow, would
take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he would take it wet
or fine on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes
blazing, no overcoats and wind-blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the
forlorn sea, to work up an appetite, to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into
the waves until nothing of them was left but the two curling smoke clouds of their
inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the
dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to
my nostrils, when out of a snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of
myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of a black eye, cocky as a
bullfinch, leering all to himself.
    Â 
    I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle
to my lips and blow him off the face of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet
wink, put
his
whistle to
his
lips and blew so stridently, so high,
so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would
press against their tinsled windows, the whole length of the white echoing street.
For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in
front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their
watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters