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Tim Cratchit's Christmas Carol:
The Sequel to the Celebrated Dickens Classic
By: Jim Piecuch
November 17, 2014
$1.99
The Sequel to the Celebrated Dickens Classic
By: Jim Piecuch
November 17, 2014
$1.99
In A Christmas Carol, evil Scrooge was shown the error of his ways by three helpful ghosts and vowed to become a better person. Bob Cratchit and his family benefited most from Scrooge’s change of tune—but what happened after the goose was given, and Scrooge resolved to turn over a new leaf?
Tim Cratchit's Christmas Carol shows us Tiny Tim as an adult. Having recovered from his childhood ailment, he began his career helping the poor but has since taken up practice as a doctor to London’s wealthy elite. Though Tim leads a very successful life, he comes home at night to an empty house. But this holiday season, he’s determined to fill his house with holiday cheer—and maybe even a wife.
When a single, determined young mother lands on Tim’s doorstep with her ailing son, Tim is faced with a choice: stay ensconced in his comfortable life and secure doctor’s practice, or take a leap of faith and reignite the fire lit under him by his mentor, Scrooge, that fateful Christmas so many years ago.
EXCERPT:
Dr.
Timothy Cratchit emerged from his Harley Street office shortly after
six-thirty in the evening. He was surprised to find that the yellow-gray
fog that had blanketed
London for the past week had disappeared, swept away by a biting north
wind. He paused for a moment to gaze up at the stars, a rare sight in
the usually haze-choked city. Then, pulling his scarf tightly around his
neck, he walked quickly down the steps and
along the path to the curb, where his brougham waited. The horses, a
chestnut gelding and another of dappled gray, stomped their hooves on
the cobblestone pavement. They made an odd pair, but Tim had chosen them
for their gentle nature rather than their appearance.
As the doctor approached, his coachman smiled and swung open the side
door. The coach’s front and rear lamps barely pierced December’s early
darkness.
“Good evening, Doctor,” the coachman said as Tim approached.
“Good evening, Henry,” the doctor replied. “How are you tonight?”
The
coachman, who was tall and lean, wore a knee-length black wool coat and
a black top hat, his ears covered by an incongruous-looking strip of
wool cloth below the
brim.
“Cold,
sir,” Henry replied. Tim grasped the vertical rail alongside the
carriage door and was about to hoist himself inside when he heard a
shout. Stepping back from
the carriage, he turned to his left, toward the direction where the
sound had come from.
The
gas lamps along the street penetrated just enough of the gloom to allow
Tim to distinguish a figure hurrying toward him. As the person drew
nearer, Tim could see
that it was a woman, clutching a dirty bundle to her chest. Thousands
of poor women in London made a meager living sifting through the city’s
dustbins for usable items and selling them for whatever pittance they
could fetch. The bundle this woman cradled so
carefully probably contained an assortment of odd candlesticks, worn
shoes, frayed shirts, and the like. Still, this was not someone who
would normally frequent Harley Street.
“Wait
a moment, please,” Tim told the coachman, resignation in his voice. He
was eager to get home, and too tired to wait while the woman unwrapped
the bundle. He reached
into his trousers pocket, found a half crown and two shillings to give
her so that she would continue on her way.
When
the woman came to a stop in front of him, Tim noticed with surprise
that she was young, perhaps twenty years old. She was small, not much
over five feet tall,
clad in a tattered dress covered by a dirty, threadbare gray blanket
that she had fashioned into a hooded cloak. Her dark brown hair was
matted in greasy clumps, and a smudge of dirt smeared her right cheek.
Her face, though it was beginning to show the premature
wear of a hard life, was still quite pretty. She stood with her brown
eyes downcast, silently waiting for Tim to acknowledge her.
“Can I help you, miss?”
“Thank
you for waiting, sir,” the woman said, still struggling to catch her
breath. “I was hoping that you could take a look at my son. He’s very
sick.” She tugged
back a corner of what appeared to be a piece of the same blanket that
constituted her cloak to reveal the face of an infant.
Tim
suppressed a groan. It had been a long day—all his days seemed long
now—and he was eager to get home. “Come inside, please,” he instructed
the woman. To Henry he
said, “This shouldn’t take too long.”
Unlocking
the office door, Tim went inside, lit a lamp, and then held the door
for the woman and baby to enter. Inside, the woman gazed at him with an
earnestness that
aroused his sympathy.
“I’m
very sorry to bother you like this, Doctor. I didn’t mean to come so
late, but I had to walk all the way from the East End, and it took
longer than I thought,”
she explained. “I never would have found your office yet, except that a
kind old gentleman asked if I was lost and then pointed me to your
door. A friend of yours, he said.”
“Well,” Tim replied in a reassuring tone, “you’re fortunate that I had to work late; I usually close the office at six.”
The woman shuffled her feet uneasily. “If it’s too late, sir, we can come back tomorrow.”
“No, no, that’s all right. Now tell me, what is the matter?”
“It’s
my Jonathan, sir. He’s been sickly since birth, and now he’s getting
worse,” she said. Tim noticed that her eyes were moist.
“Let’s
take him into the examination room.” Tim led them in, lit the lamps.
The woman laid the child on the table and pulled back the blanket and
other wrappings. Tim
was shocked to see that the boy was not an infant—his facial features
were too developed—but he was clearly undersized, and Tim did not dare
hazard a guess as to his age.
“How old is the little fellow?”
“Three last summer, sir.”
Tim
studied the boy. His eyes were open, brown like his mother’s, and
though they gazed intently at Tim, the little body was limp. No mental
defect, but something physical,
and severe. Tim placed a thumb in each of the tiny hands.
“Can you squeeze my thumbs, Jonathan?” he asked. The boy did so, feebly.
“Very good!” Tim said. Jonathan smiled.
“I
didn’t know who else to go to, sir,” the woman explained as Tim flexed
the boy’s arms and legs. “There’s no doctors who want to see the likes
of us, but then I remembered
you, sir. You took care of me many years back, when I had a fever. You
came by the East End every week then, sir, and took care of the poor
folk.”
“I’m sorry, but I treated so many patients that I can’t recall you, Miss, ah, Mrs.—”
“It’s
Miss, Doctor. Jonathan’s father was a sailor. We were supposed to
marry, but I never seen him since before Jonathan was born. My name’s
Ginny Whitson.”
It
was already clear to Tim that the child, like his thin, almost gaunt
mother, was badly malnourished. That accounted in part for his small
size. Tim also noticed
that the boy’s leg muscles were extremely weak. Jonathan remained
quiet, looking at the strange man with a mixture of curiosity and fear.
“Does Jonathan walk much?” Tim asked.
“No,
sir, never a step. He could stand a bit until a few weeks ago, but now
he can’t even do that. I think it’s the lump on his back, Doctor.”
Tim
carefully turned the boy over to find a plum-sized swelling along the
left edge of his spine at waist level. He touched it lightly, and
Jonathan whimpered. “How
long has he had this?” Tim asked.
“I
didn’t notice it till a year ago, sir. It was tiny then, but it’s grown
since. In the last month or so it’s gone from about the size of a grape
to this big.”
Tim
hesitated. He needed to do some research and then give Jonathan a more
thorough examination before he could accurately diagnose and treat the
boy’s condition. He
did have several possibilities in mind, none of them good, but there
was no sense alarming Ginny prematurely. After she had swathed her child
in the bundle of cloth, Tim ushered them back into the waiting room,
where he studied his appointment book.
“Can
you come back at noon on Saturday? I’m sorry to make you wait that
long, but I have some things to check, and it will take time.” Ginny
nodded. “I’ll see then
what I can do,” Tim said.
“Oh,
Doctor, thank you so much,” Ginny blurted, grateful for any help
regardless of when it might come. She shifted Jonathan to her left arm,
and thrust her right hand
into the pocket of her frayed and patched black dress. Removing a small
felt sack, she emptied a pile of copper coins onto the clerk’s desk.
Most were farthings and halfpennies, with an occasional large penny
interspersed among them.
“I
know this isn’t enough even for today, sir,” she apologized. “But I’ll
get more, I promise. I’m working hard, you see, sir. Every day I go
door-to-door and get work
cleaning house and doing laundry, and save all I can.”
With
his right hand, Tim swept the coins across the desktop into his cupped
left palm and returned them to Ginny. He was touched by her attempt to
pay him, knowing
that she must have gone without food many times to accumulate this
small amount of money. Her devotion to her son and effort to demonstrate
her independence impressed him.
“There isn’t any fee, Miss Whitson. I’ll be happy to do whatever I can for Jonathan at no charge.”
“But
I can’t accept charity, Doctor,” the surprised woman answered. “It
wouldn’t be right, taking your time away from your paying patients.”
“We
all need charity in one form or another at some time in our lives,” Tim
said. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if not for a great act of charity
long ago, and as
for taking time away from my paying patients, that may be more of a
benefit than a problem. Come along, now, and I’ll give you and Jonathan a
ride home.”
Tim
locked the office door and escorted Ginny and Jonathan to his coach as
tears trickled down her face, picking up dirt from the smudge on her
cheek and tracking it
down to her chin. Jonathan began to cry soon after the coach got under
way, and Ginny comforted him with a lullaby, one that Tim remembered his
own mother singing to him. When the child finally fell asleep, both
remained silent, afraid to wake him. Once they
reached the narrow streets packed with sailors, beggars, drunks, and an
assortment of London’s other poor wretches, Ginny asked to be let out.
Tim knocked twice on the roof, and Henry reined in the horses.
As
she was about to step out of the carriage, something she had said
earlier occurred to Tim. “One moment, Miss Whitson. You mentioned that
someone directed you to
my office. Do you know who he was?”
“No,
Doctor,” she replied, “and he didn’t say. He was an old gentleman,
thin, with a long nose and white hair. Neatly dressed, but his clothes
weren’t fancy, if you
know what I mean, sir.”
Tim
bade her good night and watched as she walked down the sidewalk, past
gin mills and dilapidated rooming houses. She soon turned into the
recessed doorway of a darkened
pawnshop and settled herself on the stone pavement. Tim briefly thought
of going back to find out if she even had a home, or if she was going
to spend the night in the doorway. Fatigue slowed his thoughts, however,
and by the time the idea took root, the carriage
was a block away and gathering speed.
Tim
lay back against the soft, leather-covered seat cushions, pondering
which of his Harley Street neighbors had directed her to his office.
Most of them would have
ignored such a woman, or ordered her back to the slums. Her
description, though, didn’t fit any of them. He shook his head, trying
to remove the cobwebs from his tired mind. It must have been someone
else, someone he just couldn’t recall in his fuddled state.
No sense wrestling with the question, he concluded.
During
the long drive across town to his home in the western outskirts of
London, Tim tried to relax. It had been another in a seemingly endless
string of days filled
with consultations and surgeries. Tim had arrived at his office at
five-thirty that morning, half an hour earlier than usual, to prepare
for a seven o’clock operation on the Duchess of Wilbersham. She had been
complaining for weeks about pain in her left shoulder,
which she attributed to a strain that refused to heal. Since she never
lifted anything heavier than a deck of cards at her daily whist game,
Tim doubted the explanation, and several examinations showed no sign of
any real injury. The duchess had a reputation
as a hypochondriac who sought treatment for her phantom ailments from
the best doctors in London, then bragged about how she managed to
maintain her health by not stinting on the cost of good medical care. To
placate the pompous woman, Tim had finally caved
in to her demand that he operate to repair the tendons and ligaments
she insisted had been damaged. Because the surgery was minor and the
duchess, with good reason, abhorred hospitals, Tim performed the
operation in his office, which was equipped for such
tasks. A small incision and internal examination verified his suspicion
that the duchess’s shoulder was perfectly sound. When she awoke, with
more pain from the surgery than she had ever experienced from her
imaginary injury, along with sutures and an application
of carbolic acid to prevent infection, she swore that the shoulder had
not felt so well in ten years. Tim wondered if she would be so pleased
when the effects of the morphine wore off.
“Just
give the doctor that bag of coins I asked you to bring,” the duchess
had ordered her maidservant. “I won’t insult you, Dr. Cratchit, by
asking your fee, but I’m
sure there’s more than enough here to cover it, and worth every
farthing, too.”
When
Tim’s clerk opened the leather pouch, he found it contained one hundred
gold guineas. Tim could not help contrasting the way his wealthy
patients tossed gold coins
about with Ginny Whitson’s offer of her pathetic little hoard of
coppers. The thought stirred memories of his own childhood, when pennies
were so scarce that he and his brothers and sisters sometimes had to
roam through frigid alleys to scavenge wood scraps
to keep a fire burning on winter nights. It was on one such night when
he lay awake, shivering on his thin straw mattress, that he overheard
the conversation that changed his life.
“I’m to get a raise in salary,” his father murmured excitedly, trying not to wake the children.
“I don’t believe it,” Mrs. Cratchit declared. “That old miser would die before he parted with an extra farthing.”
“It’s
true, dear,” Bob Cratchit insisted. “I’ve never seen Mr. Scrooge like
that. We sat for an hour this afternoon, talking. He asked a lot of
questions about our
family, Tim in particular.”
“I’m surprised that he even knew you had a family, Bob.”
“I
was, too, dear, but he seemed to know a good bit about us. Why, from a
few things he said about hoping we had a good Christmas dinner, I think
he’s the one who sent
the turkey yesterday. Who else could have done it?”
“Well, I hope you’re right, Bob. I’ll not believe any of it until I see the proof.”
Tim
smiled at the recollection of his mother’s skepticism. She had always
been the realist in the family, Bob the optimist. Tim had shared his
mother’s doubts. She
and the children had despised Ebenezer Scrooge, blaming his greed for
the family’s struggles. But with his stomach filled to bursting with
turkey left over from Christmas dinner, Tim dared to hope that his
father was right, and that old Scrooge might truly
have undergone a change of heart. After all, it was Christmas, a time
when good things were supposed to happen.
The
sudden stop as the carriage arrived at his front door shook Tim from
his reverie. He was out the door before Henry could dismount from the
driver’s seat and open
it for him, a habit that Tim had observed left his coachman more amused
than chagrined.
“That’s all right, Henry,” he said, waving toward the carriage house. “You and the horses get inside and warm up.”
Entering
the large, well-lit foyer, Tim was greeted by his maid. Bridget Riordan
was a pretty Irish girl, with long, flaming red hair pinned up under
her white cap,
numberless freckles on her cheeks and small nose, and green eyes that
always seemed to sparkle with happiness. She took Tim’s top hat, coat,
and scarf. “Dinner will be ready in a half hour, Doctor,” she announced,
“so you can rest a bit if you’d like.”
“Thank
you, Bridget,” Tim replied, watching her walk gracefully toward the
kitchen. He loosened his cravat as he climbed the stairs, thought
briefly of skipping the
meal and going directly to bed, and decided that he could not afford
the luxury since he had a long evening of work ahead of him.
As
usual, Tim dined alone. At the time he had purchased the large house,
Tim had expected that he would one day need the space for the family he
hoped to have. However,
the demands of his practice and the memory of his one previous and
unsuccessful attempt at courtship kept him from actively pursuing any
romantic interests. Now he sometimes wondered whether he would spend the
rest of his life a bachelor, without the happiness
he had enjoyed as a child in the crowded and bustling Cratchit home.
Solitary
meals in the cavernous dining room always seemed to dim Tim’s pleasure
despite the hot, tasty food that Bridget prepared. When he had hired
them after buying
the house, he had often insisted that she, Henry, and William, the
gardener, join him in the dining room. But the trio had been servants
since their childhood, and their previous masters, who had not shared
Tim’s lack of concern with class distinctions, had
impressed upon them the idea that it was improper for servants to
associate with their master outside the scope of their duties. The
dinner conversations had been stilted, with Tim trying to make
conversation and Bridget, Henry, and William replying in monosyllables
punctuated by “sir.” Tim had quickly given up the experiment, yet he
still could not help feeling a pang of sadness, mixed with a bit of
jealousy, every time the sound of their friendly conversation and
laughter in the serving room rose high enough for him
to hear. Still, he admitted that all three servants had warmed to him
over the past two years, and had grown more willing to engage him in
informal conversation. Perhaps one day they could dine together without
the awkwardness of his previous attempts, he
thought.
Shortly
after nine o’clock, Tim retired to his upstairs study. There each night
he reviewed the next day’s cases, looked up information in his medical
books that he
might need, and, if time permitted, read the most recent scientific
journals to keep up to date on the latest advances in medicine and
surgery. At one time he had contributed his share of new knowledge to
the medical profession, but for the last several years
he just could not find the time to do so. He really didn’t have the
opportunity, anyway. How could he devise innovative treatments, he asked
himself, when most of the patients he saw, like the duchess, had
nothing seriously wrong with them to begin with?
Having
finished his preparation for the next day’s work, Tim drew out his
pocket watch. Not quite half past ten. He reached across the wide
mahogany desk for the latest
issue of the Lancet, which had lain unread for more than a week.
Tim pushed it aside. It would have to wait until he had researched
Jonathan’s condition. Tim walked over to the bookcase, scanned several
volumes, removed a reference book, and returned
to his chair. The coal fire that Bridget had stoked was still burning
strongly; he would see if he could find confirmation of his suspicions
regarding the boy’s problem, or alternative, less dire diagnoses, before
retiring. Balancing his chair upon its two
rear legs, he put his feet on the desk and opened the volume.
Tim
did not know how long he had been reading. It seemed he had gone over
the same paragraph a dozen times without registering the information in
his mind when he felt
how cold the study had become. He glanced toward the fireplace, where a
single small log emitted a parsimonious warmth. The room seemed
dark—looking over his shoulder at the gas lamp, he was surprised to see
only a candle in a tin wall sconce, flickering in
a chill breeze that came through a cracked windowpane. Strange, Tim
thought, he was certain Bridget had closed the curtains. And when had
the window broken?
His
eyes better adjusted to the gloom, Tim turned back toward the
fireplace. His surprise turned to shock when he looked down at his legs
and saw that the new black
trousers he had been wearing were now coarse brown cloth through which
he could see the outline of his legs, withered and weak. The elegant
marble of the fireplace had been replaced by cracked, ancient bricks.
Leaning against them was a crutch. His childhood
crutch.
Tim
stared at the hearth, baffled, for how long he did not know. Then he
started to get up, reaching for the crutch, only to find that his legs
were so weak he could
not stand. He gazed at his extended right hand. It was that of a child.
He leaned back in his chair, rubbed his eyes, and when he looked around
again, he was back in his own comfortable study. The gas lamp burned
brightly, the fire still blazed in its marble
enclave. There was no crutch to be seen. He flexed his legs. They were
strong. He shuddered, perplexed at what had occurred. Although he was
quite sure that he had not fallen asleep, he reassured himself that it
must have been a dream. Not surprising, considering
his thoughts about Jonathan, and the unavoidable realization that the
boy’s plight reminded him so much of his own childhood illness. Tim
stood, uneasy, and dropped the reference book on the desk before heading
to bed.
Standing
over the washbasin, he poured water from a pitcher into the ceramic
bowl. He wet a washcloth and rubbed his face. Even in the light of the
single gas lamp,
he could see the creases beginning to form on his forehead, the dark
circles under his blue eyes. A few strands of gray were sprinkled
through his blond hair. He thought he looked at least a decade older
than his thirty-two years. Combined with his short stature
and thinness, Tim reflected that in a few years he would look like a
wizened old man.
Too
much work, that was the cause, he thought. Unpleasant work. And now he
also had to do something about Jonathan Whitson, who had what was likely
a malignant tumor.
A boy not yet four, probably sentenced to death by nature before his
life had a chance to begin. Five years ago, Dr. Timothy Cratchit would
have tackled the child’s case enthusiastically and with optimism. Now he
was reduced to performing fake surgeries to
placate hypochondriacs.
Ginny Whitson had met him years earlier, and believed in his abilities. He only wished that he shared her confidence.
AUTHOR:
Jim
Piecuch is an associate professor of history, and has published several
works of nonfiction. Tim Cratchit’s Christmas Carol is his first novel. 
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