DICKENS: I wish! (Beat.) There isn’t a ghost of a chance of making the 19 December deadline. (Pours a drink and toasts.) To the death of the dead-line…dead, dead—wait a tick. (He writes.) Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined to regard a coffin nail as the deadest piece of iron in the trade, but back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate; therefore, permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail! Door, door, door, doornail—doorbell—door-mouse—door—what!

(ALL the CHILDREN rush in. MARY carries her doll followed by a very pregnant CATHERINE.)

CHILDREN (ALL): Papa! Papa! Papa!

DICKENS: Catherine, the children—please!

CATHERINE: Mr. Dickens, find a little patience in your heart, they’re here to remind themselves what their father looks like. They miss him. You miss your father, don’t you children?

CHILDREN (ALL): We miss you, papa.

DICKENS: I know what you’re doing; Catherine, using the children to woo me from my work will not win the day.

CATHERINE: Are you joining us for supper?

DICKENS: Not hungry.

BOZ: Papa, we want you to sing carols with us.

WALTER: Quack!

MARY: My doll hurt its nose. Will you kiss it?

DICKENS: The doll is fine, Mary. Have mother kiss it.

WALTER: Quack!

KATE: Read us a story?

DICKENS: I’m busy Kate.

WALTER: Quack!

BOZ: You know what I want?

KATE: Wait your turn, Boz.

MARY: I want my doll’s nubbly nose all better.

WALTER: Quack!

DICKENS: Walter, what are you doing?

WALTER: Quack!

BOZ: He’s being a duck.
WALTER: Quack!

DICKENS: It’s embarrassing; I’m a novelist and one of my own children refuses to speak the Queen’s English. Walter, you cannot go through life relying on poultry as a means of communication.

WALTER: Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack!

BOZ: I can be a cow, look, moo.

(ALL the CHILDREN begin mooing.)

DICKENS: No livestock is permitted in these quarters.

CATHERINE: Charles, you’ve been at the page for three days. Locked away in the attic, you’ve neglected to eat, to sleep, or to be with your family. Something is wrong.

WALTER: Quack!

DICKENS: Wrong? That’s an understatement; I have a child so perilously steeped in ignorance he can’t speak and of those who can, I hear nothing but ‘want.’ Worse yet, you’re belly is full with another child and we’re drowning in debt.

CATHERINE: I believe you had a hand in my current situation.

DICKENS: We barely maintain house here in lovely Osnaburgh Terrace, I write in an attic and have never been less inspired than at this moment.

CATHERINE: Children, come with me. (SHE ushers them aside.) Your father is behaving like a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner.

DICKENS: Uh…Let me write that down.

CATHERINE: What has come over you, Charles?

(DICKENS wads up a piece of paper as the CHILDREN march about.)

DICKENS: Nothing! That’s the problem. Nothing has come over me. I can’t write. I can’t think. I have a dead line I’m sure to miss. Nails, I’m stuck on—doornails. Stop that racket!

(The CHILDREN cling to their mother.)

CATHERINE: Charles, its nearly Christmas—

DICKENS: If I don’t finish the manuscript there won’t be a Christmas nor a house to have it in.