‘I do.’ He nodded. ‘I been doing it for fifty years, man and boy. I retired from the boats when I was seventy, and now I think it’s the right time for me to retire from this too. I’m eighty-six, young Susan, and I don’t care if your family used to once own my family, I’m not a serf no more. Plus there’s my hip. And some of those kids these days, they’re hefty. There’s no a nice way of putting it. Of course when I was a boy, we were lucky if we got to eat every day never mind a grotto giving toys away like it was …’

‘Christmas?’ Sue suggested.

‘You know what I mean,’ Jago grumbled.

‘But, Jago …’ Sue gestured to Lucy behind the bar to refresh his glass. It was well known in Poldore that Jago was always a lot less grumpy after a pint or two. ‘It’s December already, it’s December the twenty-second in fact! Which means only two days until we open the grotto, where am I going to find a new Santa in two days?’

‘And that’s another thing,’ Jago said. ‘Santa? Since when did we all become Americans? I was Father Christmas, man and boy. I’m not a Santa, it just don’t feel natural.’

Sue thought for a moment. She was well aware that once she had her mind focused on something she could be a little overbearing, even forceful, and that some people didn’t think that was particularly her best personality trait.

‘Jago, the whole magic of your Sa—Father Christmas is that you have been there, every year, offering continuity, stability. Children have grown into adults sitting on your knee.’

‘I know and it feels like it, too,’ Jago mumbled, rubbing the offending joints to make a point.

‘But it’s always you, the same face behind the beard, the real white bushy beard, every year. You give it such authority, such authenticity. It won’t be the same without you, Jago. You are so wise, so statesmanlike. You are the master.’

Jago rubbed at his whiskers for a moment.

‘True enough,’ he acknowledged. ‘It’ll be nigh on impossible to replace me, with anyone short of the real thing. A substandard bloke might well ruin Christmas entirely for the young folk.’

‘So you’ll come back then?’ Sue smiled her best and most charming smile.

‘No, I’m retired,’ Jago said, taking the pint that Lucy set down for him. ‘Woman, haven’t you been listening to a word I said?’