Dark Green with Black Trim.

'Get off! If you can’t help at least keep out of my way,’ Moira shouted. He was always creeping up on her. This time she had her head and shoulders in the cupboard, hunting for the canteen of cutlery they only used once a year.
In answer a second hand joined the first and tugging her out of the cupboard, began to gently massage her ribs. She felt his warm breathe on her cheek and despite her annoyance, shivered as his lips investigated her ear. Soft wavy hair tickled her neck. She reached a hand over her shoulder and tugged gently on a long, silky beard.
‘Silly thing,’ she croaked as his warm tongue began to trace wet patterns in her ear. ‘Fancy dressing up as Father Christmas. Whose idea was that, or need I ask?’
About to slap away the hands curling possessively around her waist, she glanced down. Green? Since when did Father Christmas wear green? And it wasn’t her husband Gerry’s hand. Giving a muffled shriek she twisted from the embrace and spun around.
‘You’re not Gerry!’
‘Who said I was?’
‘But – but you were kissing me.’ Moira desperately grabbed a tea towel and began scrubbing at her ear.
‘And very nice too,’ smiled the stranger.
‘Oh very funny.’ Moira was exasperated. Gerry, who taught at a nearby comprehensive only seemed to have friends who were on their own and down on their luck. He was fond of pronouncing that if you couldn’t show a bit of kindness to your fellow man then you didn’t deserve to live, consequently, at times like Christmas to Moira’s disgust, they always had a houseful of strays; but she’d never seen this one before.
‘I suppose you’re another of Gerry’s lost sheep. Where does he find them?’
‘Do I look like a lost sheep?’
‘You look ridiculous. Whose idea was a dark green with black fur trim Santa suit? With your black hair and beard you look like a negative.’
‘But better looking you have to admit,’ he said seriously. ‘That is unless you particularly wanted a fat old man smelling of reindeer and with a red nose and cheeks that match his outfit?’
Negative or not at six foot tall, green eyed, slim and with that lovely black hair, Moira grudgingly agreed he was by far the better option; and he smelled nice: a sort of heathery, smoky fresh air smell, with a just a hint of lemon and musk.
‘Don’t look so desperate,’ he said. ‘I’m here to give you your Christmas present.’
With her ear still tingling, she didn’t care to call how she was feeling desperate, but managed to pull herself together and said, ‘That is kind of you, but you shouldn’t have; I know you’re probably short of funds…I’ll pop it under the Christmas tree and open it after lunch.’
In two lithe strides he barred her way to the kitchen door and said, ‘You must have it now.’
Moira clutched her hands to her chest and nervously waited for him to hand her the present, but he didn’t. Instead, he leant against the kitchen door, stared quizzically at her with his clear green eyes, held out his arms and said, ‘Come on then.’
Moira’s blood ran cold. The house was silent and still….She could no longer hear the TV that Gerry kept on from the time he got up to the time he went to bed. And where was the chatter and laughter that gave her no peace when his friends were here?
‘What have you done?’ She whispered.
‘Just held up time for a wee while so we aren’t interrupted while I grant your wish.’
Moira sank to her knees. ‘Oh my God, you’re kinky. You’re going to rape me.’
He moved swiftly away from the door and lifted her to her feet. Kinky? Rape? No, no, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. I’m different I’ll grant you that, but honestly I’m as gentle as a kitten.’
Her thoughts flashed to the ginger farm kitten they had tried to give a home to last year. Untamable the vet had said, and she and Gerry still had the scars to prove it.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I can’t hold time forever. Can we get on with it?’
‘On with what?’ Moira began to cry.
‘Hush now.’ He patted her awkwardly on the back. ‘You’re supposed to be enjoying this. You did ask for it when you visited Limerick. You’re a very lucky girl you know. There aren’t many that manage to catch, or in your case sit on a leprechaun and keep him pinned down until their wish is complete. They’re slippery little devils normally. Anyway, here I am, your tall dark, beautifully made and rich Father Christmas.’
He held out a small leather pouch. 'Here are the riches. It’s only one coin, but as you know Leprechaun gold never runs out. It re-appears as soon as you’ve spent it. We don’t have too much time for the other part of your wish though, so dry your eyes, and let’s get on with it.’ He tugged at the crotch of his trousers. ‘It’s very uncomfortable being this shape. How do humans put up with it?’
Moira did remember Limerick. There’d been an awful row because as they were about to go there for the day, an old college friend of Gerry’s had turned up and her darling husband had insisted on taking him along.
The lovingly prepared picnic of brown bread and smoked salmon, a lemon cheesecake she’d sweated buckets making the day before; linen napkins and the expensive bottle of wine with two crystal glasses, had all been wasted. The two of them had just chucked the food down their throats while they shared private jokes, and made sly references about long ago girl students and made a date for him to spend Christmas with them.
She had seen red that day and had a hazy recollection of throwing the empty wine bottle at Gerry. She also dimly recalled showering all sorts of curses on her thankless husband's head, and wishing all sorts of changes in her life that made her blush to remember them, but how on earth however briefly, had she failed to notice she was sitting on something other than grass?
She gave a final sob and began to pull herself together. This was silly. There were no such things as Leprechauns, or wishes being granted, or Father Christmas for that matter.
How could this be a wish conjured up on an Irish hillside last summer? This person, whoever he was, was flesh and blood because with her cheek pressed to his chest, she could feel the steady thud of his heart.
But what about the silence? No. Moira’s common sense kicked in. It was one of her husband’s childish pranks. He and his pals were probably hiding and any minute now would come bursting through the door laughing their silly heads off.
But did she know for sure? The thought niggled: refused to go away. She looked up. Santa smiled down. She could drown in those eyes.
Oh well --- it was Christmas and a girl was entitled to a little fun. She wrapped her arms around his waist and snuggled closer.
‘I hope I didn’t flatten the dear little fellow,’ she said. ‘Now tell me Santa, what do you find so uncomfortable about the human shape?’

Ivy, Blackbirds and Birthday Surprises

It wasn’t until you got right on top of it that you noticed the old garden shed. Hidden behind dense shrubbery and tucked against the red brick garden wall, over the years ivy and honeysuckle had crawled unhindered over its corrugated tin roof and weather twisted wooden sides, covering it with an impenetrable blanket of twisted stems and the thick, glossy leaves.
In spring blackbirds reared their young on the shed’s south facing side and John had lost count of how many generations of wobbly young he’d seen testing their wings as they made ready to join the world beyond the garden walls. He’d watched blue tits hustle and bustle as they plucked juicy caterpillars from the honeysuckle leaves and lost track of time whenever he sat in a battered armchair inside the shed and dreamed about the past.
Today he needed to slide another sheet of corrugated iron onto the roof due to a nasty leak that had developed over where he sat.
‘Sorry old chap. I won’t be long.’ John apologised to a large black spider as it scuttled indignantly to safety. Fighting the ivy that had wormed its way between past layers of rusting iron, John was sweating by the time he’d pushed the new panel in place and had, as best he could, pulled the ivy back into its original position.
Inside the shed, spots of winter sunlight danced over cobwebbed walls and flickered hypnotically over the back of John’s armchair. Sinking gratefully into its dusty embrace, he wiped his forehead and breathing in the shed’s own particular smell, an ancient mixture of sawdust, creosote, damp earth and linseed oil, closed his eyes and sank into that half way zone between dreams and hazy awareness that any sunny afternoon lends itself to so readily.
At the top end of the garden, the roomy Edwardian villa John had inherited from his grandparent’s had been ruthlessly modernised by his wife Emma.
Thankfully, her passion for gutting perfectly comfortable rooms and slavishly imposing the latest interior design fads on them didn’t extend to the garden.
John paid a pensioner for a few hours work a week to keep the lawns and shrubbery tidy, and prayed that when she ran out of rooms, Emma wouldn’t be seduced into bringing the garden into the house, or some such rubbish that he’d seen on TV only the other week.
As it was, he tried to ration his shed time to coincide with when she was out of the house, or at night while she slept, in order not to draw her attention to it.
If you passed over the threshold of his hideaway, you wouldn’t find mucky magazines hidden under a heap of potato sacks, or a portable radio to help while away the hours as he repaired a piece of furniture. There wasn’t even a tiny primus stove to make a welcome cup of tea between bouts of labouring in the garden, because John didn’t do any of those things. Orphaned and brought up by his doting grandparent's the shed was his only contact with the past. It was the last visual touch of childhood. To disturb the row of chisels hanging from a dusty board, or move the glue pot one inch from its place on the battered workbench, or take down the pine kitchen chair hanging from a beam, its replacement leg still clamped in the teeth of a rusting vice, would be sacrilege. In here, time as they say, stood still.
He came to with a start, checked his watch and sighed. It was time to get changed. Emma had invited the neighbours around to celebrate his birthday. He rubbed a finger on the tiny window pane that looked out onto the shrubbery and longed for the one present he knew Emma, his well meaning, but butterfly brained wife twenty years younger than he, could never give him. To turn back the clock and once more stand by his grandfathers side as he worked at the bench.
An hour later, desperate for a pee, John broke into his neighbour Sheila’s interminable monologue about the school she’d selected for her moronic son and throwing apologies over his shoulder, locked himself in the downstairs cloakroom.
Too late! Emma had followed him and rapped on the door.
‘John, hurry up, we’re about to cut your birthday cake.’
He groaned. ‘Do we have to?’
‘Yes we do. Now come along. Reaching fifty five isn’t the end of the world, and besides you have presents to open.’
Forcing a smile as he laid aside Sheila’s gift of a chrome desk tidy, John bent over to gather up the pile of discarded wrapping paper.
‘Wait a minute Darling, there’s one more.’ Emma handed him a large envelope. ‘From me to you. Go on, open it!’
The card said, Congratulations on becoming the proud owner of a brand new garden pavilion.
‘It’s all arranged,’ Emma said. ‘The men will be here at eight tomorrow morning to pull down the old shed. By the time you get home from work, the pavilion will be up. We shall have such fun with it once that depressing shrubbery’s been cut down and paving laid. It’s a shame your birthday’s so near Christmas, otherwise we could have held a barbecue to christen it.’
Speechless, John stared at the card and then ripped it to shreds. ‘You couldn’t even make it a plain old garden shed could you,’ he shouted. ‘Oh no, we had to have a bloody pavilion. Well, I’m warning you; anyone who touches my shed is dead!’
He stormed out of the house, pushed the shed door open and slammed it shut.
Above his unsuspecting head, the rotten roof timbers, loosened when John repaired the roof, began to sag and the new, sharp edged metal so lovingly put in place earlier that day, unfettered by clinging ivy roots, slid gracefully down and sliced cleanly into his neck.