Free The Long Shadow by Celia Fremlin Page A

grandsons? He’d have loved it—of course he would: and all for free, now that he was dead. No boredom. No bother. No risk of the kids wrecking the whole image by crying and squabbling. It was a soft option, being dead. Good old Ivor!
    *
    Father Christmas, though. And after barely three months. What else would they have done to him, between them, by the time another year had passed—and all the years to follow?
    Ivor, Ivor, she cried silently, what are they doing to you? Come back, just for one moment, and let me look at you, remind myself what you were really like …!
    But already he was slipping away into the past, smaller and smaller, further and further away, scarlet hood, white beard and all.
    *
    “Granny! I say, Granny!”
    Imogen roused herself, with an effort. There at her side was Timmie, gazing up into her face wide-eyed, and slightly aggrieved. “Granny, I thought Grandpa was supposed to be dead? Well, he isn’t. He’s still here. In his study, all dressed up as Father Christmas! Why isn’t he dead, Granny, like he’s meant to be?”

CHAPTER VIII
    N ATURALLY, NOBODY TOLD Timmie off for telling lies. For one thing, it was Christmas, and for another, as Dot pointed out, there are no such things as lies nowadays, there is only the inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality. On top of which, Timmie, it seemed, took after her, he was very sensitive really, and this was his way of coming to terms with his grief.
    If any. To be honest, he and his grandfather had never really hit it off. Timmie was inclined to spoil Ivor’s most impressive reminiscences by saying things like “Who’s Churchill?” Still, he must feel something about his grandfather’s death; it was a relief, in a way, to see some sign of it at least.
    And so, after the first stunned moments, Timmie was treated as a cross between an invalid and an O.B.E., everyone vying with one another to respect his feelings and hoping that someone else would ask the insensitive questions which would get him talking.
    Because it was rather mysterious. There had, of course, been a mass surge towards the study right at the beginning, and an uneasy, half-embarrassed search had been undertaken, but naturally nothing was to be found. No Father Christmas costume. Nothing.
    “What makes you so sure it was Grandpa?” someone ventured to ask him. “I mean, anyone could dress up as Father Christmas …?”
    Timmie seemed, for a moment, to be puzzled by the question.
    “He was in his big chair, that no one else may sit in,” he began. “He had his glasses on, and he was reading one of his big books—the Greek book, the very big one. And he was cross,” Timmie added, as if this clinched the identification. “He jumped up andsort of came at me, like I’d done something awful. And I hadn’t, Mummy, I hadn’t touched a thing. And I never meant to interrupt him. I mean, he’s supposed to be dead. It’s not fair !”
    Of all this array of evidence, nothing remained for public scrutiny except the Greek Lexicon. There it lay, the large Liddell and Scott, open, and balanced on the arm of Ivor’s big leather chair, just as it always used to be when he was working. But of course that didn’t prove anything, anyone could have put it there. No one had, but obviously they could have. No point in making a drama of it, anyway.
    The questions and arguments teetered this way and that. Someone must have been looking up a word for a crossword puzzle? What, in Greek ?Well, just looking up a word, then. But none of us knows any Greek….
    Suddenly, Imogen could bear no more of it. She slammed the big Lexicon shut, and leaned across the armchair to put it away on the low shelf where it belonged. And now, with the only piece of tangible evidence thus removed, the whole puzzle seemed suddenly to disintegrate. There was nothing more to be explained, no more to be said. Timmie was reassured that it couldn’t possibly have been Grandpa—not that he seemed to be all