ALL the roofs of Munch, a Cam- bridgeshire fen town,

are covered in bright red Neapolitan pantiles, the startling result of a bygone fashion. Waves of scarlet tiles break over the tiny dormer windows of the one-up, one-down houses with their crooked chimneys and slanting, sinking doorways. The same outlandishly cheerful tiles splash their way across the uneven roof of the Bear Inn and other great houses of the market square.

Sandwiched inconspicuously between the shops facing the Bear is the Munch Launderette. Here on a foggy day in December, the proprietor, Peter Mapple- doram, sat drinking tea in the back room with his fat wife, Joan. Peter, a big blue-eyed man with huge hands, resembled an American farmer of the Mid West. Farmer Mappledoram, Peter's father, had been known as a hard taskmaster.

By the time Peter had taken over the farm, many of the men had left to work in the bottling and canning factories. Mecha- nisation was the answer, everybody agreed. Peter bought old machines at farm sales with a will, and by the time his farm had been mechanised into bankruptcy, he had decided himself to be what he fondly described as 'a bit of a mechanical genius'. Certainly he had the aptitude to turn any gleaming, perfectly-working machine, by a simple overhaul, into a nightmarish heap of junk whose design would have been rejected as improbable by cartoonists such as Emmett or Heath Robinson.

Joan had complete faith in her husband's ability. So the pair of them had moved into town to open Munch's one and only launderette. This became a popular ren- dezvous for housewives with plenty of time on their hands, in a town that lacked a coffee shop. After many childless years, the Mappledorams had been blessed with a son. This was eight-year-old Jason, the brightest boy in Munch, and a great favourite with his teachers. Peter and Joan looked on him with bemused amazement.

'What happened at the WI, Mother?' Peter was asking his wife. `Missus Metson was there, Missus Claydon and Missus Crow. Missus Osler gave her talk saying how you can make doormats out of used baler twine. Any luck about Santa yet?'

'No, nowt, but Oi'll step 'down to the Bear tonight and see if Shep Balaam will do the job.'

Joan and Peter were not church-goers, but Jason went to Sunday School and they were all on good terms with the vicar, the Revd Mr Dillon-Robinson. It was Jason's last day of school before the Christmas holidays, and the vicar and others were arranging two children's treats. One was to be a village hall pantomime at nearby Eveningham where Joan had lived before she was married. Here the Munch vicar took occasional services, when the mediaeval church would be creakingly unlocked. A few days after that there was to be a nativity play in St Luke's at Munch, in which Jason would play a shepherd watching his flocks by night. His father had rashly promised to find a suitable Father Christmas for the pantomime, and this was now exercising Peter's mind. If he couldn't find anyone, he might have to do the job himself.

Joan rattled down to the school in the car, which also did duty as a taxi. Munch had a railway station five miles out of town in the middle of nowhere, and one or another of the Mappledorams met each train in the hope that someone would get off. Sometimes this happened, and the traveller would look incredulously at the taxi, which would have become a valuable Vintage Rally car if it had ever been painted or repaired over the years.

At the school, Joan got out of the car and waited at the gate with all the other mothers, all younger than she.

`The kids'll be glad it's Christmas soon,' Mrs Starling told her, as they peered across the tarmac playground to a distant door. 'When I was a girl, we had Fireworks Night to break the winter. This year my Sasha ran out of the room screaming when I tried to light a sparkler. Mr Vigus the head had got them scared stiff with terrible films of children with their faces burnt off.' Just then, a muted roar and a clattering of feet revealed the children, released at last for their Christmas holidays.

'We break up, we break down we don't care if the school falls down,' came a ragged chant.

'Quickly, jump in!' Joan cried, as Jason ran to meet her. 'We've got to meet the four o'clock train, in case anyone's on it.'

Yes, a lone traveller in a thick black coat stood despairingly outside the closed Rail- way Arms pub, the only building in Munch, for all he knew. Forlornly he knocked at the door to ask for directions, but there was no answer. Glumly he prepared to re-read a metal advert for coal tar soap screwed on to the wall, and a sign advertising Greene King beer, evidently the nearest things to art and literature that Munch had to offer. Suddenly, out of the darkness and fog, came a ray of light, the headlamps of an outlandish rattletrap car that emerged slowly from the gloom.

Joan fumbled in her bag, produced a card reading 'Taxi' and placed it in the window. Gladly the traveller sprinted to- wards it, and Joan carefully took the car door off to admit him, then lifted it back and fitted it into place.

'My son will keep you amused, while Oi concentrate on driving this old thing,' Joan explained.

'Do you like animals?' Jason piped up eagerly.

'That'll be your room,' Joan remarked later, as they drove over the cobbles in front of the Bear. 'The one with the back of a dresser against the window.'

Mother and son hurried home, for in two hours' time the washing-machines would be switched off and the whole house would be freezing. Mr Mappledoram was on his knees tinkering with a machine as they entered. He had bought all the washing- and drying-machines second-hand, one by one, and installed them himself. Rickety pipes emerged from them and vanished snakily through holes in the ceiling. The 17th-century house, which had been dere- lict when the Mappledorams had bought it, was heated from the washing-machines in the launderette. When all the machines hummed and turned, the house was pleasantly warm. After closing time, it became cold. In summer, the central heat- ing would be separated from the laun- derette by several stern twists from a monkey wrench.

It was Peter Mappledoram's proud boast that he had restored the old house and turned it into a launderette in the space of 18 months. The level of the floors varied, rather like a crazy house in a funfair, for various wings with rambling passages had been added over the centuries. A long- locked cupboard, when opened, had re- vealed a tangled pile of chamber pots. Some of these now housed geraniums and other hardy plants. Instead of putting up wallpaper, Peter had painted the walls white and had then painted splodgy red patterns up and down them by hand, a labour of which he was immensely proud.

After an early supper, Peter went across to the Bear, while Joan tucked Jason up in bed in a room full of gurgling, wheezing pipes.

`Will I really see Father Christmas next week?' the boy asked his mother.

`Yes, of course. And his reindeer.'

`And do they really bring presents to all the children in the world?'

`Yes, o'course. Me and Dad have often told you.'

`Of course, reindeer can't really fly,' Jason pointed out, in a thoughtful and pedagogic tone. `They just rush along the ground, really fast.'

There was a pause in the conversation. Joan wondered if she ought to insist that the reindeer flew, while Jason grappled with the problem of reindeer who could run around the world in a single night. They did not seem to fit into his world view, yet his parents had assured him that they existed, along with Father Christmas. It was very puzzling, yet he would no doubt understand it when he was older.

His parents were only dimly aware of the boy's great interest in animals, and of his passion for classifying them into families the dog family, the deer family, weasel family and so on. He knew the difference between odd-toed and even-toed ungu- lates. Reindeer belonged to the latter family, but how could they run so fast? Joan and Peter encouraged Jason in his social life — the Cubs and Sunday School — but his spiritual life, so to speak, was something of a closed book to them. The boy's knowledge had been picked up dur- ing school library lessons. There was no natural history instruction at St Luke's Primary School, only a fearful lesson called Environmental Studies, loathed by all.

Motorbike boys stood in groups outside the Bear shouting to one another above the roar of their forever stationary bikes. Like most people in Munch, they spoke in harsh, loud, aggressive accents, halfway between East Anglian and Northern. Peter walked through them without seeing them, ducked his head under a beam and stepped down into the dark public bar. A notice on the door read `No Van Dwellers', for hordes of gypsies arrived every year for the summer picking — first gooseberries then strawberries. Two or three off-white trai- lers remained on Farmer Murfitt's fields all winter, but their inhabitants prudently kept apart from the rest of Munch.

Seven big men, all retired farm-workers, nodded a greeting to Peter as he entered. The launderette proprietor was an infre- quent visitor to the pub, and they won- dered what he wanted. A slight gleam of irony in their greeting let Peter know that the sins of his father were not quite forgotten. Younger men played darts, ex- claiming `Middle for diddle' and other cries of the game, but otherwise remaining silent. Cartoon jokes about pubs and darts had been cut out of newspapers and pinned to the lowest of the ancient oak roof beams, a complete mediaeval tree. A wicker eel-trap, shaped like a giant hour- glass, hung close by. Shep Balaam, the biggest of the cloth-capped men who were sitting with pints before them on the table, kept a similar trap at home, for he was the last of the old-time eel babbers.

Peter bought two glasses of beer, set one before Shep and sat opposite the giant, all but ignoring the other men, who went on talking.

`I were just saying to Rolph, the first tractors, they was Mogul tractors,' Shep said to Peter, acknowledging his glass and enfolding it in an enormous paw. `You remember those days, no doubt. The farmer sacked you if you joined a union, an' e expected to see you in' church on Sunday.'

`Ah, they did do that,' another man, Jack Wilderspin, agreed. `Moi father never had a Satdy off, never had a holiday. Four horses pulling binders, there was. All done by horses, then. Us boys would go rabbit- ing.'

`Dad worked as hard as anyone!' Peter countered briskly. `And so did my Joan 'fore she married me. Worked with Suffolk Punches, she did, over at Eveningham. You must remember that time the wagon tipped over!'

`That did, Oi remember,' said a third man, Sam Kiddy. 'Hermerfodite wagon we called it, `cos it cud be took apart and be two different carts.'

`Never mind carts!' Peter interrupted. `How do you feel about sledges? Never mind horses, Oi'm talking about reindeer now.'

It took a long time before Shep could understand that he was being asked to play Father Christmas at a village hall. As his costume would be provided, and as he could `Ho ho ho' with the best of them, he soon agreed, and the matter was clinched over another pint.

bring the costume over Sunday >' Peter called as he left.

`Goodnight!' the Seven Wise Men proc- laimed solemnly. Everyone in Munch was a great `Goodnighter', and Peter had once heard five overalled young men, stepping from a works van into five neighbouring council houses, all saying `Goodnight' in unison, like a chorus. It had reminded him of the Seven Dwarfs. Back at the laun- derette, he found Joan smoking and listen- ing to her Singing Postman records.

`Molly Windley, she smokes like a chimbley, but she's my little nicotine gal,' she carolled.

On Sunday, Peter went down to St Luke's to collect Jason from the Sunday School and the Father Christmas costume from the vicar. A gaunt yellow-brick 19th- century building, with a tall spire, St Luke's stood among trees whose branches now dripped moisture onto the graves below.

`My children will be ready in five mi- nutes,' said Miss Foulds, the elderly Sun- day School mistress. `The vicar's some- where about, if you wish to see him.'

`Thanks, missus. Nice photos your chil- dren draw.'

And with a nod towards the pinned-up drawings of Moses in the bullrushes, he stepped inside. Behind the church, the graveyard merged imperceptibly with the Revd E. Dillon-Robinson's back garden.

`Oi'm just a-going to see moi Tom and put flowers on urn,' old Mrs Hodge told him, as she hobbled among the tombs. `You'll find the parson over thur, a-doing his gardening.'

A cheerful little bald man, with beaming spectacles, the vicar dug vigorously as orange oak leaves fell around him, lodging on the tattered yew branches and on the ground. One tree apparently thought it was still autumn. Egbert the vicar appeared to imagine it was summer, for he was dressed frugally, his bare arms emerging from ragged sleeve-holes in a worn pullover.

`Ah, Mappledoram!' he greeted the launderette-owner in fruity tones, planting his spade in the leafy earth. 'You've come about the costume, I suppose. I could hear your little boy's voice above the rest just now, in the Sunday School. You might consider sending him to a choir school. I'll have a word with my friend, the Dean of Ely.'

`Well, I don't know about that. He had a sore throat last week, but moi Joan tied a dirty sock round 'is neck and that cured that.'

In the vestry, Egbert lifted a heap of pamphlets, advertising the Additional Cu- rates' Society, from the lid of a chest removed from the long-demolished mediaeval church. Inside the old Crusader Chest, with its strange carvings, the Father Christmas costume lay, complete with beard, among neatly-pressed cassocks and choir robes. Were he a larger, fatter man, Egbert would have made a good Santa Claus himself, for he was fond of children and taught Scripture twice a week at Jason's primary school.

`He's a funny kind of teacher — he tries to make us happy,' the boy had once remarked.

Outside, with the costume under his arm, Peter found his son in the midst of a shouting throng of children, some standing on ivied tombs.

`No fighting! We've prayed to God so we can't be bad,' Jason's voice rose above the rest once more. Dad! What've you got in that brown paper parcel?'

`It's the vicar's robe, he wants me to wash,' Peter said hastily, hoping that the beard wasn't sticking out. It would never do to break the lad's faith in good St Nick.

That night, in the pub, the Seven Wise Men looked up in irritation at Peter's entrance. They were glad to see the re- formed farmer sometimes, but he musn't push his luck. Shep received the parcel gravely.

`As long as there's no fog, so Oi can get moi van over to Eveningham,' he com- mented. 'Some o' these December fogs last 12 days or more. No driving then!'

`Turn a farmer twice around in the fog and he wouldn't find his way out of his own field!' Peter agreed. 'But the forecast for next week is bright and sunny.'

Nevertheless, on the morning of the Christmas panto, a white fog hung over the land. Cars drove slowly into Munch, their headlights burning a hole through the mist. By early afternoon, a white sun with a silver ring round it took over from the headlights and the fog dispersed. So it was with a light heart that the parents and children of Munch made ready, for the show began at four o'clock. It was to be a rewritten account of the Jack and the Beanstalk saga, called Jack and the Christ- mas Tree.

A huge, heavy man, strong for his years, Shep Balaam resembled one of the shire horses he had worked with as a lad. The vicar's costume fitted him quite well, and he stood in front of the mirror adjusting his beard with stolid satisfaction. Had his wife Martha still been alive, she would have told him not to be so ridiculous as to drive his van to Eveningham while dressed up as Father Christmas.

`Change when you get there,' she would have commanded him.

Bereft of such wise counsel, and com- pletely humourless, Shep stepped out of his council house in a blaze of scarlet and white, and climbed into his old van. Soon he was driving between flat fields, scowling at the incredulous honks of other drivers.

`What they be staring at?' he wondered.

All of a sudden, no one could stare at anything, for a cotton wool fog, rising from some long-buried will-o'-the-wisp-haunted marsh, rolled towards Shep and enveloped him, van, false beard and all.

`It's only three more miles,' Shep thought. 'No point staying here, when fogs can lie for days on end. There'll be hell to pay if of don't turn up, with everyone waiting. So oi'll drive real slow, inch by inch.'

This he did, successfully for a while. Finally he succeeded in driving really slow, inch by inch, off the road and into the ditch, where the van lurched violently to one side, front wheels embedded in the mud. Quick witted when he had to be, Shep jumped out before the final bump as his van settled into the ooze. Swearing but unhurt, he stamped up and down the road in his Father Christmas boots, before deciding to seek help at a nearby cottage.

But where was a nearby cottage? He knew he was near Henry Aves's place, and reckoned he could reach there if he walked along the edge of a nearby field. It was slow going, but he walked and walked, able to see no more than his boots and the furrows of black earth below them. After a while, he stopped for he heard a car's engine back on the road growling amidst the cries of landlocked seagulls. Should he go on, or should he run back and flag the card down? He would run back! Beard askew, he plunged through the misty fields, scattering flocks of thrushes as he went. Black clods of earth took life as rooks, and flew away cawing.

Sound is deceptive in thick fog, and the car he heard was actually a long way away. When Shep reached his van once more, what did he see? A gypsy, one of the few who remained in the district all winter, was standing thoughtfully beside the vehicle, one hand resting on the roof. A dark, unshaven, brooding-eyed man, the gypsy may have been wondering if he could help to pull the van out of the ditch. Or he may have had dark designs on the van, for most of his tribe were scrap dealers, adept at stripping abandoned cars.

Whatever his thoughts, they were re- placed by utter amazement as a huge angry Father Christmas burst roaring out of the fog, with giant fists flailing. A wild light of gypsy-hatred in his eyes, Shep sprang at his hereditary foe, snarling like a lion who sees vultures descending on the body of his best friend. Shep thought the worst of gypsies, and the gypsy didn't think much of Shep.

With one hand, Shep grabbed the man by the coat and lifted him an inch from the ground. Promptly the gypsy punched him hard on the nose. Cursing and hitting out, the two men swayed on the edge of the ditch. Meanwhile, the car that Shep had heard nosed slowly forwards towards the scene of the accident.

AN expert driver, Joan held the wheel of her part-time taxi, squinting hard at the road ahead through her black-rimmed spectacles. Peter and Jason in the back seat had complete faith in her ability, and chatted amiably.

Will it be the real Father Christmas or just someone dressed up?' Jason asked.

`The real one all right,' his father re- plied, wondering if Shep had left early enough.

Just then, at a bend in the road, an extraordinary sight met their eyes. The fog rolled back to reveal Father Christmas covered in mud and blood swinging pun- ches at a small dark man who dodged him every time. Glancing towards the Mapple- dorams' old car, the astute gypsy leaped across the ditch and vanished into the whiteness of the fields.

His hood torn half away and his beard dripping blood and hanging loosely from his chin, Santa Claus staggered wildly to the car, a rich stream of four-letter words frightening the last drifts of fog away.

`Oh dear!' said Joan in a motherly voice, producing a clean handkerchief to stem the flow from Santa's nose.

Ten minutes later, everyone was on their way to the panto once more, a dishevelled Santa wedged tightly between Peter and his son.

`Aren't you a real Father Christmas then?' Jason asked, in a pained squeaky voice.

`No, Oi'm bloody well not!' Shep re- plied, aptly enough. 'Father Christmas be blowed! There's no such bloody person, and Oi'm a fool to have gone along with this — tomfoolery.'

`Shep! The boy!' Peter exclaimed, but too late.

A sudden look of shocked, innocent surprise appeared on Jason's face, as on a fawn suddenly hit by an arrow. He was silent for the rest of the journey. The fate of Shep's van was reported to the police from the first telephone box they reached.

At the village hall, the matter was quickly explained to the members of the drama society. A glass of whisky backstage soothed Shep's temper, while needle, thread and hot water were applied to his costume. When all the 'oh-yes-he-dids' and `oh-no-he-didn'ts' were over, and Father Christmas appeared, only a purist would have complained at the brown tinge on his beard or the fact that the end of it was tucked inside a borrowed Brownie's scarf. The children all loved his jolly red nose.

Thoughtful throughout the show, and slow to shout 'Behind you!' Jason walked pointedly away from the Father Christmas charade. As the other children gladly received gifts from the giant and now gentle man, Jason drew aside in scorn and looked on half in accusation and half in contempt. It was a clear night, with an orange half moon, and with frosty stars flickering in icy fire as the family returned to Munch.

That night, in bed, Jason had a few things to say to his parents. `Why did you tell me a lie about Father Christmas and his reindeer? Why?'

`Everybody tells children that. We thought you would like it,' his father replied, gruff and shame-faced. Early next morning, Jason woke up feeling bright and important. There was no Father Christmas, so now the world made sense! His impression of the world had been right all along, and there were no mysteries lying in wait to defeat his under- standing. As he happily readjusted his world view, now that of a world where everything fitted neatly into place, he felt as if the cobwebs had been swept from the corners of his eight-year-old mind. `Did you know there's no Father Christ- mas?' he asked Sasha Starling, skipping towards her in excitement and pride. "Course I did!' she replied scornfully. Next day, a strange thing happened. For no reason at all, Jason insisted that he wouldn't be a shepherd in the church Nativity Play. `Is it because David waved at you last year and you forgot your lines?' his mother asked.

`No, I just won't, that's all! I don't even want to go and see the play.' In the end, Jason made such a fuss that his fond parents had to telephone the vicar and explain. Luckily Miss Foulds found no shortage of eager substitutes, and the show went on. After much persuading, Jason agreed to go and watch.

A beckoning light shone from the church doorway onto the dark, cold night outside. Parents and children, heavily muffled, hurried into the building and took their seats before a charming fairy-lit stable. Toy animals stared solemnly at a pile of straw, and a little further away, a shepherd's tent waited for an angel and a star. Treble voices broke the silence, and the play began. Although a few lines were muffed, the audience of parents were not over-critical.

`Ahh! Your Petra was enchanting. And didn't Simon say 'is words proudly! Yes, we're going over to my wife's sister — she do Christmas dinner in two shifts, there's that many on us,' was only one response. Even the man in the black coat who had hailed Joan's taxi, lured into the church by the absence of night life in Munch, had been deeply moved. He was visiting Munch in order to spy the land out for a gang of bank robbers. There and then he vowed to be a better, more pure and spiritual bank robber.

But Joan and Peter Mappledoram, the launderette couple, felt uneasy. They had noticed Jason's expression as he watched his playmates act out the Christmas story. A light of amused contempt had seemed to glow from the boy's eyes. From time to time he had given a slight crooked smile, like that of a Cambridge undergraduate about to compose a satirical revue. Evidently he took a lofty view of the proceedings.

But wait! The drama was not yet over. Suddenly the angel who had appeared to the shepherds returned, and stood over the doll that represented Jesus.

`Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill to men,' the angel proclaimed.

Both Peter and Joan burst into loud coughs to drown their tiny son's squeaky peal of mocking, ringing laughter.