A Pennyworth of Magic - A Christmas Tale

It was a cold, grey Christmas Eve; the grey streets of the old town were piled deep with snow and a boy called Gregory was standing on the front steps of his little terraced council house, shivering, with his hands in his pockets and looking miserable because he didn’t have any money to buy his mum a Christmas present but then, at his feet something glinted, bright orange, amid the cold white powdery snow; a shiny copper penny.

He picked up the penny and looked at it but was a little disappointed.

“Ohh”, he said to himself, unhappily, “But what can you buy for a penny anyway?”.

And he was going to throw the penny away when he noticed something odd about it.

It wasn’t like any penny he’d ever seen before because the queen on it wasn’t the same as the queen he’d seen on postage stamps. She looked like some other queen and there was a date on the the coin, 1892.

“It’s an old coin”, he thought to himself, “A very old coin”.

Then he remembered that people collected old coins; that some old coins were very valuable and he wondered if anyone would buy the old coin he had found.

He went along the high street, from shop to shop, showing his penny to the different shop owners but, though most of them were very kind to him, none of them wanted to buy his old coin and one shopkeeper even told him, “It’s not a rare coin, you see, there are lots of Victorian coins like that and so coin collectors won’t pay anything for them”.

Gregory’s heart sank when he heard this and he was going to just throw the coin away again when he passed an odd looking shop that he had never noticed in the high street before; a shop called
Garland’s with a window that seemed to give out a strange, warm golden sort of glow and he thought he might give his coin one last try.

It was an odd sort of shop with funny, tiny window panes and, inside, it was even stranger because there was no electric lighting; it all seemed to be lit by lamps with flickering flames inside and the shop keeper, who he assumed was called Mr Garland, looked very odd. He had large bushy, copper coloured side burns and was wearing old fashioned looking clothes with a stripy waistcoat and a golden pocket watch on a chain.

And, even more oddly, when he looked at the penny, his eyes lit up and he said, “Why this is an awful lot of money for young boy like you”.

Gregory thought he must be joking.

“A lot of money?”, he asked, confused, “But it’s only an old penny”.

“Only an old penny”, said the man, laughing heartily, “Why you must be very rich to say such a thing”.

And then, handing the penny back to Gregory, the old man swept his arm round about his shop and said, “Well. Look around, son. There’s lots of things you can buy for an old penny in my shop”.

Gregory was still sure that the man must be joking but then, when he looked round at all the things that were for sale, the young boys eyes widened with amazement, because nothing in the shop cost more than a penny.

And there were some beautiful things on the shelves, like porcelain dolls in old fashioned dresses and singing, clockwork birds in cages.

But then Gregory spotted a musical snow globe made of glass with a little ice skater inside and, when he wound it up, the ice skater skated round and round and snowflakes fell down as Jingle bells played.

“I’ll take this” he said, handing it and his penny to the man behind the counter.

“An excellent choice, young man”, said the shopkeeper, wrapping up the present in shiny gold paper and tying it with a red silk ribbon before putting the penny into a strange, old fashioned looking till that made a ringing sound, “One penny exactly”.

Then he handed the shinily wrapped gift to Gregory and, happily, Gregory ran home with it to give to his mother.

“Whats this?”, said his mother surprised and smiling when she saw the gift.

But then, when she had unwrapped the present, her happiness turned to worry.

“Gregory?”, she asked, putting a hand on his shoulder and looking deep into his eyes, “You will tell me the truth won’t you? You didn’t steal this did you? Mommy won’t be angry with you if you tell the truth”.

“No. I didn’t. Honest”, said Gregory, looking up at her and shaking his head and he tried to tell her all about the old penny he’d found and the strange shop called Garlands.

But his mother wouldn’t believe him.

“There’s no shop called Garlands in the high street”, she said, her face starting to become angry.

Just then, however, Gregory’s Gran, who had been sitting in the next room and listening to the whole conversation came in and she looked totally spooked.

“No. The boy’s right”, she said to Gregory’s mother, “There was a shop called Garlands in the high street, when I was a little Girl but it was hit by a bomb, during the blitz. I remember the man who used to own it. I remember he had these big, bushy side burns”.

“And a golden pocket watch”, added Gregory.

“Yes that’s right”, said his Gran, nodding.

His mother just looked completely befuddled but then she wound up the musical snow globe and the skater danced round and snowflakes poured down and his mother smiled and then, for some reason, started to cry.

“Oh Gregory”, she said, grabbing him close and hugging him tightly, “It’s really magical”.