in the grotto

It began innocently enough. We just had to wrap some gifts.

But Clive said he needed to get one more thing. I should pop down with him before we started wrapping everything up. I was against it and I know now that I should have stuck with my instinct.

Clive had to buy an expensive bottle of scotch. This took us to a quieter shop beside Santa’s Grotto, where the staff gave us free mulled wine. Soft outlines of jazz sketches were being gently piped in. A different world from the flashing lights and queues everywhere else. So we let our guard down.

The wine must have been spiked, or one of the free samples they gave us was. Within half an hour we’d found our way inside the grotto. It was shut but had clearly been well-used all day. There were scraps of wrapping paper everywhere and a funk of holiday cheer.

For a long time we were not able to shift ourselves, just clinging to the tinsel-strewn floor. After breaking in to seek refuge we’d stacked chairs against the door for a barricade. Worn out from this and dizzy from who-knows-what, we lay there listening to the all-consuming commotion outside. It sounded as though an army was marching up the High Street.

Before long we descended to a new level of terror. With the soundtrack of cheers from outside – cheers that sounded desperate and tortured from the grotto floor – something odd happened. Clive was free-associating about the hundreds of hours of film that he watches every month. Somehow his descriptions got projected and it was all I could do to keep my eyes on the flickering chaos lighting up our fake cave sanctuary.

He spoke about La Strada, which he’d watched several times over in preparation for writing an essay no-one had asked him to write. As he spoke dancing images of a glum-looking young woman playing the trumpet lit up the papier mâché and crêpe paper decorations.

He went on for what felt like hours. Images from Rescue Dawn and Only Lovers Left Alive leapt unevenly from one faux stone to another. Clive evoked, and I absorbed, scenes of moody vampires and prisoners of war escaping through the jungle.

An actual escape attempt, once my energy levels rose, brought us through a back door, that was alarmed, into some tropical zone. I dread to think where we must have been in reality. With the piercing call of the alarm fading now, I could hear the pleasant sounds of a brass band as we came up out of the buzzing swamp and headed for home.

Clive saved my life. Beyond that it’s hard to be sure of anything. We’re going to keep it low-key for the rest of Christmas.