Page 112 of Christmas at the Movies
Nick remembered how noisy and chaotic he’d found the classroom when he’d first started school. He’d dreaded school dinners in the hall, the smells making him queasy and the clattering cutlery giving him a headache. The playground was even worse, with kids rushing about shouting.
‘Elliot hasn’t made any friends yet,’ confided Miss Varma.
That made Nick feel sad. It was lonely being the odd one out.
He went over to Elliot and crouched down to speak to him.
‘Hi, Elliot,’ he said softly. He wasn’t sure if the boy would be able to hear him with the headphones on.
‘Hello,’ said Elliot, never taking his eyes off the train he was playing with.
‘Is that a locomotive?’ asked Nick.
‘No,’ replied Elliot, not meeting his eye. ‘It is a shunter. It takes the engine off the train.’ He picked up a different train. ‘This is the hopper. It can carry over one hundred tonnes of freight.’
‘Wow,’ said Nick.
Elliot ran the train along the wooden tracks. He pointed to each of the train carriages in turn and told Nick what type it was and exactly what function it had. The little boy was a walking encyclopaedia of train facts.
‘This is a diesel train,’ said Elliot. ‘It only goes two hundred kilometres per hour. The fastest train in the world went 574.8 kilometres per hour on the third of April 2007.’
‘You know a lot about trains,’ said Nick. ‘Have you ever seen the movieThe Polar Express?’
The animated movie was based on a children’s book that Nora and Simon had given him for Christmas when he was little.
Elliot shook his head.
‘I bet you’d really like it,’ said Nick. ‘It’s about a boy named Billy who goes on a magical train ride to the North Pole and gets to meet Santa Claus. Santa gives him a bell you can only hear if you believe in Santa.’
Some people in Nick’s class said that Santa Claus wasn’t real and that people who believed in him were babyish. Ollie said that he’d caught his mum putting presents under the tree last Christmas Eve. Nick had asked Dad if Santa Claus was real, unsure if he wanted to know the truth. Dad had thought for a while before replying. ‘Well, Saint Nicholas was a real person. He lived in Turkey during the Roman Empire.’
Nick frowned, not satisfied with Dad’s answer. A lot of things about Santa just didn’t add up. Nick had seen reindeer at the Cotswold Wildlife Park, and he just couldn’t understand how they could carry a sleigh loaded with enough toys for the whole world – even if there were eight of them.
‘But how can Santa Claus possibly travel all over the world in just one night?’ He’d looked up how long it would take for a plane to fly around the globe – forty-four hours, and that was without any stops.
‘You’re right,’ Dad said. ‘Nobody can prove that.’
‘So youdon’tbelieve in Santa?’
‘On the contrary,’ Dad replied. ‘Idobelieve in Santa. But I think Santa is an idea, rather than a person. Every time you do something kind for someone – and don’t expect anything back – Santa is real. You know that lovely feeling you get inside when you do something nice for someone else?’
Nick nodded.
‘That’s the real Christmas magic,’ Dad said. ‘That’s Santa Claus at work.’
That explanation was good enough for Nick.
Elliot attached a carriage to the back of the locomotive. ‘I don’t like going to the cinema. Movies are too noisy. They make my head hurt.’
‘I used to feel that way too,’ admitted Nick. He still did sometimes. Even though he was a kid himself, he despised the Saturday morning Kids’ Club screenings at the cinema.
The bell rang. Not Santa’s Christmas bell – but the end of playtime bell.
‘You’d better get back to class, Nick,’ said Miss Varma.
As he went back to his classroom, Nick thought how sad it was that Elliot didn’t like going to the cinema. The little boy could watchThe Polar Expresson television, but that wasn’t the same as watching a movie on a big screen. Dad always said that it was only in a cinema that you saw a movie the way that the director wanted it to be seen.
But, most of all, seeing a movie in a cinema was a shared experience. Nick responded to stories intensely. He liked knowing that other people sitting there in the dark were feeling the same things as him. Elliot shouldn’t miss out on that experience, just because of his sensory-processing issues.
