The Amazing Brain of O C Longbotham

by Barbara Spencer

  Dr Benson looked puzzled.

  ‘That’s what I call him,’ she explained.

  ‘Kitty!’ Mrs Longbotham shushed her.

  ‘I was only saying.’ Kitty glowered and lapsed into a sulky silence.

  ‘I’m sorry, Doctor. I have three children and some days it feels more like three thousand.’

  ‘Well, his chest and heart sound fine,’ the doctor said after a bit, listening to Philip’s back and chest through his stethoscope. ‘Right, Phil. I’ll just take a look in your ears …’

  ‘Why?’ Philip said, suddenly noticing that he was being prodded and poked.

  ‘Because of the wasp, silly.’

  ‘Kitty!’

  ‘You mean I’ve got a wasp in my ear,’ Philip shouted and clamped his hands over his ears.

  Mrs Longbotham leaned back and covered her eyes with her hand. ‘Now look what you done, Kitty! Why do you say such ridiculous things? You know how he is.’

  The doctor suddenly looked serious. ‘And how is he?’

  ‘Weird,’ said Kitty gloomily, before her mum could answer.

  ‘Kitty!’ said Mrs Longbotham, sounding like a saucepan of milk boiling over.

  ‘Well, he is, Mum. Very weird. He likes to help and he likes to clean things. If that’s not weird, I don’t know what is.’

  ‘He is very particular, Doctor,’ Mrs Longbotham rushed to explain. ‘He also likes measuring things.’

  ‘That sounds quite normal to me.’

  Kitty shook her head as if to say, no, it doesn’t.

  ‘Well, we’ll get him checked out. Now, don’t worry, Mrs Longbotham …’ Noticing she was about to burst into tears, the doctor leaned forward and gently patted her hand. ‘I am sure it’s a one off. Nothing to worry about.’

  The following morning Mrs Longbotham, still feeling a bit tearful, took Philip to school since it was his first day and, at the end of the afternoon, went to collect him. Arriving early, she waited in the corridor for the bell to ring.

  Inside the classroom were 28 children plus Miss Smith, their teacher. From force of habit, Mrs Longbotham counted each one, writing the total in her diary.

  Spotting Mrs Longbotham outside the classroom, Miss Smith trotted out.

  ‘May I have a word?’

  Mrs Longbotham glanced up from helping Philip on with his coat. ‘Mmm?’

  ‘About Philip!’

  ‘Is he all right? He was stung by a wasp yesterday and had a bit of a do.’

  ‘He’s absolutely fine. But did you know he could read?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Miss Smith.’ Mrs Longbotham said, her smile a little patronising. ‘Philip knows his numbers but not his letters.’

  ‘I know them now, Mum.’

  ‘What!’ she exclaimed. ‘But how?’

  ‘I don’t know how.’

  ‘That’s exactly right.’ Miss Smith’s smile resembled a sickly rhinoceros. ‘I asked Philip to give out flash cards to the children on his table. ‘Each child is given six words to take home and learn.’

  ‘And?’ said Mrs Longbotham cautiously.

  ‘Eight children – forty-eight cards. But Philip didn’t give them out, did you, Philip?’

  ‘I don’t know, Miss Smith. I can’t remember,’ Philip said politely.

  ‘Well, I can assure you, Philip, you didn’t give them out, you kept every one. I turned round to talk to someone,’ she explained to Mrs Longbotham. ‘By the time I turned back, Philip was handing me the cards. Then he asked if he could play with the Lego because he knew them.’ Miss Smith’s eyeballs protruded out of their sockets with indignation. ‘And he did! All forty-eight, I tested him!’

  Mrs Longbotham shook her head. ‘I’m so sorry, but I promise you I didn’t teach him.’

  ‘Well, someone did,’ Miss Smith insisted.

  On returning home she asked her two daughters,‘Have either of you been teaching Phil to read?’

  ‘What! You’re joking, Mum, aren’t you,’ said Kitty. ‘Phil?’

  Philip, who was playing with his train on the sitting room carpet, looked up. ‘Yes, Kitty?’

  ‘You can read … how did that happen?’

  Philip smiled. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Know anything else?’ Kitty said.

  Philip shook his head and went back to playing with his train.

  By the end of the spring term, Mrs Longbotham had been called into school three times. ‘I really don’t understand. He’s no trouble at home,’ she said with a worried frown. ‘Whatever it is, I’m very sorry.’

  ‘So you should be,’ Miss Smith’s jaws snapped together like an irate tortoise. ‘Just imagine how I felt. There’s me explaining how one plus one equals two and I see Philip doodling. And do you know what he was doodling?’ she said, her voice shrill and peevish sounding.

  Mrs Longbotham shook her head.

  ‘His four times table,’ Miss Smith shrieked in her face.

  ‘His four - times - table!’

  ‘Oh dear,’ murmured Mrs Longbotham. ‘I’ll see he doesn’t do it again.’

  She made another appointment with the doctor, who gave Philip some sums to do while he chatted to Mrs Longbotham. Philip smiled and did them in three minutes flat.

  Over the next couple of years, Mrs Longbotham was called into school so often Kitty said the school should present her with a special seat with her name engraved on it.

  Seven of these visits were for Philip when his head seized, like in assembly when the children gave three rousing cheers for their retiring headmaster. Eight were for doctors’ appointments because Philip was gathering a huge fan club of doctors, all of them eagerly wondering what trick his brain was going to pull next.*

  ‘Philip’s brain,’ said one, ‘is rather like being an explorer in a new and uncharted territory. You never know what you’re going to find. Very exciting.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Kitty said when she heard. ‘If Phil’s brain is anything, it’s like global warming – so far all it’s done is cause freaky weather.’

  Secretly Mrs Longbotham agreed with her while Philip wasn’t bothered either way. He never remembered it happening, and simply got on with things.

  As far as Mrs Longbotham was concerned, the real problem was her two girls. Every time she took Philip to visit the doctor, she wished she was brave enough to bring up the subject of her daughters’ brains – convinced both Anna and Kitty had been born without any.

  Or if they did have brains, where did they keep them? Not in their heads; those were full of scrambled egg.

  School agreed with her, the head teacher calling Mrs Longbotham into school six times about Anna being absent without permission and six times about Kitty (also being absent), who considered that only fair.

  ‘I don’t want Anna thinking she is more important than me,’ she told her mother as they waited outside the head teacher’s office.

  During that visit, the head teacher unfortunately let slip that Anna and Kitty had also been responsible for two teachers taking early retirement.

  As a result there was a chronic shortage of qualified teachers that year and, sadly, in Year 2, Miss Smith became Philip’s teacher again. Vividly recalling how Philip used to trick her by pretending not to know things when he did really, she spent most of the day peering over his shoulder, half-expecting to find him studying Chinese instead of his school reading book.

  ‘Philip refuses to learn to spell,’ she told his mother at parents’ evening.

  ‘Can’t he spell anything?’ said Mrs Longbotham, sounding anxious.

  ‘Of course he can,’ she retorted. ‘But words like …’ Miss Smith plucked a sheet of paper from a folder with Philip’s name on it, handing it to Mrs Longbotham. On it was a long list of words: Mrs Longbotham began to read:

  Mrs Longbotham stopped reading, groaned silently, and handed the list back.

  Miss Smith waved her hand in the air, like someone shooing away an annoying fly. ‘Perhaps you’ll take the list with you and practise the word
s till Philip can spell them.’

  ‘At least your arithmetic is fine,’ Mrs Longbotham said, searching for her car in a car park overflowing with cars, most of them silver like hers. ‘Do you find spelling a problem, Phil, you never used to?’

  ‘I don’t, Mum.’ Philip gave a cheery smile. ‘Words are easy, if they make sense.’

  ‘Make sense?’

  ‘Yes, Mum. Loads of English words don’t make sense. I like French best.’

  ‘French! How do you know French?’

  ‘I read Kitty’s book last night. French is ever-so easy, it has rules.’

  Suddenly feeling rather warm, Mrs Longbotham fanned herself with her hand and turned the car heater down.

  ‘So how do you spell cough, Phil?’

  ‘k – oh - fuh.’

  ‘And bough?’

  ‘b - oh - wuh.’

  Suddenly feeling cold, Mrs Longbotham turned the car heater up again. ‘I think we’ve got a problem, Phil.’

  ‘Have we, Mum, what’s that?’

  The problem of Anna and Kitty, however, was not so easily solved. Of course, being the eldest, it was Anna that started the rot. Exactly like a caterpillar which changes into a pupa, that looks like a peanut, before turning into a moth with furry wings and horns, so Anna at age 11 (and on the first day of secondary school), sat down in a chair and refused to budge.

  Mrs Longbotham thinking she was suffering from first-day nerves, said kindly: ‘Don’t worry, dear. You sit there quietly. I’ll drop the other two at school and come back for you.’

  When she got back, Anna still had no intention of moving. ‘I’m not going.’

  ‘Of course you are, dear. It’ll be super and you’ll have such fun.’

  ‘No! You can torture me if you want, bludgeon me to death with a rolling pin, cut off all my fingers, I am not going to school.’

  ‘Now you’re being silly. Come along.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘But, Anna, you have to go to school.’ Mrs Longbotham cast around for something serious to say. ‘It’s the law. If you don’t go to school, the authorities will put me in prison. You wouldn’t like that now, would you?’

  Anna glared. ‘I’ll go on one condition.’

  Mrs Longbotham got to her feet, smiling brightly. ‘Yes?’

  ‘You change my name to Long.’ Anna fixed her mother with a steely gaze.

  Mrs Longbotham sighed, wondering if she dare skip the nagging stage and head straight for bribery and corruption. If that failed, she could swiftly move on to shouting and threatening with dire consequences.

  1. Anna, I’ve had quite enough of this nonsense.

  You will go to school.

  2. Get your things!

  3. I’ll count to ten! One... two…

  4. ANNA, ANNA? WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

  ‘Back to bed. I’ll get up when you change my name.’

  5. ‘Anna.’ (loud wail) ‘Come back down this instant.’

  Sadly, it was twenty-four hours before Mrs Longbotham finally got it that Anna could out-stubborn the stubborn-est of mules. Hoisting a white flag of surrender, sensibly she agreed to change both girls’ names to Long (in order to avoid a problem with Kitty the following year). Taking three days to complete the official change-of-name forms, eventually Anna went to school in her smart navy-blue uniform, four days late.

  In the final week of the summer term, when Kitty was in Year 6 and about to head off to secondary school, Mrs Longbotham received a note from the school secretary inviting her to the staff tea party.

  ‘When I got there,’ she shouted at her two daughters on her return, ‘I found out it had been sent in error. A mix-up, the secretary said, because she was so used to sending me notes.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Kitty, a tad anxiously. ‘I’m pretty sure I haven’t broken any rules. Not this week, anyway.’

  ‘Not broken any rules?’ Mrs Longbotham screamed. ‘Not broken any rules? Do you know why they were having a party?’

  ‘No, Mum,’ Kitty said patiently, shifting her gum from one side of her mouth to the other. ‘But I will if you tell me.’

  Mrs Longbotham breathed fire. ‘The tea party was for the teachers, to celebrate your departure to secondary school.’

  ‘That’s so unfair,’ Anna stormed. ‘They didn’t have a tea party for me and I’m the oldest.’

  ‘I expect that’s because you weren’t bad enough.’ Kitty jeered. ‘I told you I’d win. And you owe me a quid.’

  ‘Right,’ Mrs Longbotham said brightly the following morning. ‘Day one of the holidays. A new beginning so let’s start as we mean to go on. Go tidy your rooms, bring down your washing, and then we’ll go to the park.’ She glanced out of the window. ‘It’s a lovely day; it would be such a shame to stay inside on a day like this.’

  ‘But Mu-um, it’s the holidays,’ Anna grumbled. ‘I always stay in bed in the holidays.’

  ‘Yes, dear, I know. But as I just told you, it’s going to be different this year. By the way, Kitty, while you’re tidying would you please check under your bed. I’m missing three knives and six plates.’

  Kitty shrugged. ‘Nothing to do with me. I expect Phil’s got them.’

  ‘You can’t put plates under my bed,’ Philip said, ‘unless you put them in the drawer and I wouldn’t like that, I keep my clean t-shirts in that drawer.’

  ‘Anyway, Mum, I can’t see the point of tidying,’ Kitty argued, ‘it’ll only get messy again.’

  Mrs Longbotham drummed her fingers on the table. ‘Kitty, I refuse to have this argument every time I ask you to tidy your room. This time, I’m giving you three options: you tidy it and bring me your washing and the missing plates or I go and tidy it, in which case everything except your new school uniform will go in a black bin-liner to be thrown away when the recycling collectors appear or, you let Phil help. He’s very good at tidying.’

  ‘No way!’ Kitty shouted, hastily stuffing her last bit of toast into her mouth. ‘You keep Phil here. I don’t want him contaminating my room,’ and she rushed out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.

  The park Mrs Longbotham had chosen was a popular spot for families, with miles of walking among trees and fields, and rides and swings all included in the price. It also had a picnic site close to the river where geese and ducks idled the day away, becoming exceedingly fat on a diet of bread tossed into the water by visitors to the park.

  Entry tickets were sold at a kiosk in the gift shop. While waiting for their mother to park the car, the three children wandered about looking at the items on sale.

  ‘You got any money, Phil?’

  ‘Yes.’ Philip pulled out his purse containing several coins and a ten pound note.

  Kitty stared in amazement. ‘Where did you get all that?’

  ‘From my drawer. That’s where I put my pocket money.’

  ‘Well, lend me five.’

  Philip shook his head firmly. ‘I can’t do that. I want to buy that boat.’ He pointed to an elegant craft with a glossy brown hull and two masts strung with bleached white sails. It also had a long and very stout piece of string attached to it, with a loop at one end.

  ‘I thought I was your favourite sister,’ Kitty said.

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  ‘Well, then, you have to let favourite sister borrow money. It’s the law. Besides, I lend you money.’

  Philip looked puzzled. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Course, you don’t. You never remember anything except maths equations. What did you have for breakfast?’

  ‘That easy. I always have the same – porridge.’

  Kitty glared. ‘Okay, then, so where do we live?’

  Philip hastily opened his purse, pulling out a piece of paper. ‘23 Richard Close, Gloucester Road, Bristol, England, Europe, the World,’ he read out. ‘Do you want the telephone number too, I’ve got it here. It’s 01179 …’

  ‘No, I flipping well don’t,’ Kitty scowled horribly. ‘So, you going to lend me money or what?�
��

  ‘I can lend you two pounds.’

  ‘Okay, deal.’

  Philip pulled out a notebook, writing neatly in it. ‘That makes six pounds you owe me.’

  ‘What!’ Kitty yelped loudly. ‘You keep a record?’

  ‘Yes. The doctor told me to write everything down, so I wouldn’t forget it.’

  ‘Serves you right,’ Anna laughed.

  ‘That’s just mean,’ Kitty grumbled. ‘Now Mum will make me pay him back.’

  ‘Mum, Mum,’ Phil shouted to their mother who, having paid for their entrance, was now standing in the doorway smiling at the scenery. ‘I bought a boat. See.’ He held it up, carefully tethering the string to his wrist. ‘Can I sail it on the river?’

  ‘Hang on a minute. I got a plan.’ Anna said and ran over. ‘Mum, if we look after Phil, will you pay us?’

  Mrs Longbotham hesitated. ‘Well … er.’

  ‘Go on! You’re always saying you never get a day off,’ Anna wheedled. ‘It won’t cost much. Five pounds for four hours … between us,’ she quickly added, noticing the frown on her mother’s face. ‘That’s really, really cheap. I mean a professional child minder would cost you that an hour.’

  ‘Well … all right. Only I’m not paying you now,’ Mrs Longbotham added hastily. ‘When we get home,’ and she promptly bought a magazine and newspaper to read before lunch.

  ‘Sorted.’ Anna ran back to her sister.

  ‘How much did you get?’ Kitty hissed.

  ‘Five. I’m taking three ’cos I arranged it and then you can pay Phil back his two. But you have to buy me a chocolate bar out of the money he gave you. I’m skint.’

  Having watched Philip sail his boat, Mrs Longbotham strolled around the flower borders breathing deeply and enjoying the peace and quiet of a beautiful summer’s day. Then, finding the sun a little too warm, she moved into the shade of a tree, where there was a picnic table, and began to read her newspaper. Its headlines screamed out about a daring robbery that had taken place in broad daylight from a mobile-bank in Nottingham, carrying rather a lot of cash.