Brilliant, thought Arnold. I’m sharing my home with an idiot.
The children peered through the brown plastic at Arnold and said. ‘How can you tell?’
Great, thought Arnold. They’re all idiots.
‘Isn’t it incredible?’ he said to his wife, Edna, when he was back under the kitchen floor for the twenty-fourth time. ‘I can understand how maybe they can’t tell each other apart. I mean, all humans look the same, but how on earth they can’t see it’s me every time is beyond me.’
‘They’re idiots,’ said Edna.
‘That’s what I reckon,’ said Arnold.
The twenty-fifth time, the man tipped Arnold out into his hand and tried to paint a red spot on his fur. Arnold bit the man on the thumb and the man dropped him on the floor. Arnold ran under the kitchen units and back into his nest. The twenty-sixth time, the man put a big thick pair of gloves on and Arnold ended up with a red blob on his head. The next night, just to confuse the man, Edna went in the trap.
‘Arnie, you’re wicked, you are,’ she said to Arnold when she came back from the bottom of the garden the next morning, ‘taking advantage of simple people like that.’
Arnold thought of bringing all his friends and relations in and getting them to go into the trap one by one, but he didn’t like the idea of giving up his nightly meal of cheese and the next night he went back in the trap.
‘Look,’ cried the man, ‘it is the same mouse.’
‘The bottom of the garden’s not far enough away,’ said the woman. ‘You’ll have to take it right down the street.’
‘But it might get run over,’ said the man.
‘Well, tip it out into someone’s garden,’ said the woman. ‘It can go and bother them.’
The man went to the end of the short street and when no one was looking tipped Arnold over the hedge into the last garden. Arnold had been there many times before. In fact, he had relatives who lived there. So, he dusted himself off and ran along behind the fences following the man back home.
‘I hope this isn’t going to become a habit,’ he said when he was back in the kitchen again.
‘It’s the cheese that’s a habit,’ said Edna. ‘If you stopped going after the cheese you wouldn’t keep getting caught.’
‘I like cheese,’ said Arnold.
‘Like cheese!’ said Edna. ‘It’s a bit more than like, isn’t it? You’re a cheeseaholic.’
‘No I’m not,’ said Arnold. ‘I’m just very fond of a bit of cheese.’
‘All right then,’ said Edna. ‘Let’s see. When he puts the trap down tonight, don’t go in it.’
‘All right, then.’
‘I bet you can’t do it,’ said Edna. ‘I bet you can’t stay out of the trap all night.’
‘Of course I can, it’s easy,’ said Arnold. ‘What do you bet me?’
‘Whatever you like,’ said Edna.
‘All right,’ said Arnold. ‘I bet you a piece of Wensleydale.’
‘See,’ said Edna. ‘All you can think about is cheese.’
And she was right. Before he went to bed, the man put the trap in the kitchen cupboard. Inside it was a delicious, ripe, sweating piece of Stilton. Its powerful, thrilling perfume filled the whole room. Arnold buried his head in the nest but he could still smell it. He tried to sleep but it was impossible. At midnight he went out into the garden to find something else to eat and to get away from the beautiful temptation, but it was useless. He couldn’t get it out of his mind.
He went for a run along the towpath. He ran and ran until the house was miles behind him and his lungs were thumping like a tiny steam engine. But no matter what he did it was no good. Every time he blinked he could see the open door of the trap in his mind and glowing in its heart like a piece of the moon was the pale, irresistible cheese. The new day was hiding just below the horizon and Arnold knew that if he didn’t get home before it was light, something with sharp claws would have him for breakfast.
‘I could stay here,’ he said to himself. ‘Hide in a dark hole until tomorrow night and then go home.’ But he knew he wouldn’t. He knew he would go home and he knew he would go into the trap and eat the cheese. Edna was right, and he’d known it all along.
So, as the sun crept up into the sky and the early birds flew down to catch the worms, Arnold crawled wearily back through the fence at the bottom of the garden, crossed the lawn and slipped into the house. Edna was sitting by the trap waiting for him.
‘I tried,’ he said. ‘I really did.’
‘I know, I saw you,’ said Edna as Arnold walked into the trap and the door dropped shut behind him.
‘It’s come back,’ said the man. ‘That wretched mouse has come back again.’
‘You’ll have to take it somewhere in the car,’ said the woman. ‘Drive out into the country and stick it under a bush.’
‘Do you think it will be all right?’ said the man.
‘Of course it will,’ said the woman. ‘There are hundreds of mice in the country. It’ll go and live with them.’
She didn’t know that the other mice wouldn’t accept Arnold, that every time he tried to go into their homes they would drive him out. So the man put the trap on the back seat of the car and set off for the country.
They drove for miles and miles until they left the last house behind and were surrounded by moonlit fields. In a quiet lane by some trees the man knelt down in the grass and opened the trap. Arnold looked out and refused to leave. The man pulled the back off the trap and pushed Arnold out with his finger. Then he got back in the car and drove away.
Arnold ran deep into the grass until he found a small dark place to hide. All day he lay there curled up into a small pathetic ball. In his heart he felt a hopeless loneliness and in his mind a lifeless nothing. He knew he had lost Edna and the perfect garden forever. He had grown up there and so had his parents before him and now it was all gone because of his weakness.
I wish I was dead, he thought. I am such a pathetic creature.
When night fell he walked out into the moonlight into a wide open space and waited for an owl to swoop down and end his miserable life. But no owl came and by three o’clock in the morning Arnold was stiff and hungry.
Maybe if I sit here long enough, he thought, I’ll catch a cold and die.
By five o’clock it was light and suddenly Arnold felt frightened and ran back to the safety of the dark hole. As he ran in, he tripped over a hazelnut that had fallen from the tree above. When an owl hadn’t got him and it had been too warm to catch cold, he had thought of starving himself to death. But he hadn’t eaten for nearly twenty-four hours and had such a tummyache that he sat down and ate the hazelnut.
‘I’m so pathetic,’ he said to himself as he fell asleep, ‘that I can’t do anything right.’ And in his dreams he was running down a hill with a giant round cheese rolling after him. Just as he reached the safety of a gate he tripped and fell and the cheese rolled right over him and covered him from head to tail in red wax.
Back at the house Edna was more angry than sad. Her stupid Arnold had lost everything through no one’s fault but his own. She had done her best to keep him out of the trap but nothing she had said had stopped him. He deserved everything that had happened to him.
‘All the same,’ she said to her sister Janet, ‘I do miss him.’
‘You’re better off without him,’ said Janet.
‘You’re probably right,’ said Edna. ‘But I miss him something awful.’
‘You’ll find someone else. Just wait and see,’ said Janet. She was losing patience with Edna and went off into the garden to catch slugs.
‘I don’t want anyone else,’ said Edna, ‘I just want my Arnie.’
Then she had an idea. It wasn’t a great idea but it was the only one she had and besides, she had nothing to lose. All her children had g
rown up and gone away. She had nothing to stay in the kitchen for, so she might as well try it.
‘If I keep going into the trap,’ she said to Janet, ‘maybe they’ll take me to the same place they took Arnie.’
‘That’s a ridiculous idea,’ said Janet, but Edna had made her mind up and every night for the next week she went and ate the cheese and got caught. The humans weren’t very bright. They didn’t take her to the country straight away. After six days they painted a red spot on her back and on the seventh day the man took her to the end of the street.
‘It isn’t going to work,’ said Janet. ‘You’re just wasting your time.’ But she wasn’t, because on the eighth day the man and the woman got in the car and drove her out into the country. They stopped the car, opened the trap and Edna ran off deep into the grass until she found a small dark place to hide.
It was warm in the dark place and the air was filled with the smell of damp fur and hazelnuts. Something was snoring at the back of the hole and Edna tip-toed nervously into the darkness. Towards the back it was so dark she couldn’t see. She walked blindly forward, tripped over a broken nut shell and went flying. She landed on something soft and hairy that wriggled and swore at her.
‘Arnie?’ she said. ‘Is that you?’
‘Edna?’ said the soft hairy thing. ‘Is that you?’
And of course it was. It was both of them and, although they never went back to the perfect garden, and although there were no more meals of Stilton, they both lived happily ever after.
A year later people came and had a picnic under the hazel tree and when they had gone there was a cheese sandwich left behind. Old dreams came back into Arnold’s head, dreams that had gone to sleep. He nibbled away the bread and there it was, a thick slice of cheddar; but when he tasted it, the magic had faded.
‘I wonder what I ever saw in it,’ he said, and later that night a passing fox picked up the sandwich and took it away.
Attila the Bluebottle
There are times when life is perfect. For Attila the bluebottle it was one of those times. When he actually thought about it, every single day of his life had been perfect and he had been alive for a whole week.
He had spent the morning inside a fish head at the bottom of the dustbin and was so full up he could hardly move. Everywhere he looked it was the same view of paradise. Fat lazy bluebottles full of rotten fish staggered around with big contented grins on their faces.
‘I’m so full,’ said Attila, ‘that if you gave me a rat covered in slime I wouldn’t be able to eat a mouthful.’
‘I’m so full,’ said his sister Lucille, ‘that if the rat covered in slime had been lying at the bottom of a sewer for a year, I wouldn’t be able to eat half a mouthful.’
‘I’m so full...’ said Attila.
‘Okay,’ said their mother, ‘we get the picture.’
‘Here,’ said Attila, ‘do you want to hear a joke.’
‘Yeah, go on then,’ said Lucille.
‘This isn’t the Only Joke, is it?’ said their mother.
‘No, no,’ said Attila, ‘I just made it up.’
‘Go on then,’ said their mother.
‘Right. Two flies are standing on a dead dog...’
‘That’s brilliant,’ said Lucille.
‘That’s not it,’ said Attila. ‘I haven’t finished.’
‘It is the Only Joke,’ said his mother. ‘I know it is.’
‘Go on, go on,’ said Lucille.
‘Two flies are standing on a dead dog and one says to the other, “Is that your dead dog?”
‘Yeah, go on,’ said Lucille, hopping about on all her feet.
‘And the other fly says...’
‘...No, just carrion,’ said their mother with a sigh.
‘Oh Mum,’ said Attila.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Lucille.
While Attila explained the joke to Lucille, their mother beat her head against the rotten fish until she was sick.
‘Hey Mum, that’s brilliant,’ said Attila. ‘Can you show us how to do that?’
‘Oh, go and stick your head in a disinfectant bottle,’ said his mother and went off to the other side of the dustbin. When she got there she wriggled though the rubbish until she found a green pork chop. Then she laid six hundred eggs.
‘What’s the matter with her?’ asked Lucille.
‘Dunno,’ said Attila. ‘Maybe she’s got no sense of humour.’
Someone lifted the lid and emptied a bucket of slops into the dustbin. The falling rubbish flattened some of the flies and sent dozens of others buzzing up into the air. Attila and Lucille had been skiing inside the fish head and when the lid had been put back on they crawled out to inspect the latest delivery.
‘Yuk,’ said Lucille, ‘it’s all bits of vegetables and fruit peelings.’
‘Isn’t there any meat at all?’ asked Attila.
‘Can’t see any.’
‘What about fish?’
‘No.’
‘Cheese rind?’
‘No,’ said Lucille, ‘nor jam. It’s all just tea bags and cabbage leaves.’
‘You know what this means, don’t you?’ said Attila.
‘No.’
‘It means they’ve turned vegetarian,’ said Attila. ‘It’s the end of civilisation as we know it.’
‘What are we going to do?’ said Lucille.
‘We’ll have to go somewhere else, I suppose.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Lucille.
‘You know,’ said Attila, ‘move.’
‘What, like Mum,’ said Lucille, ‘over behind the dirty nappy mountain?’
‘No, no,’ said Attila, ‘right away.’
‘What, as far as the lake of slime, right at the bottom of the dustbin?’ said Lucille.
‘Further than that,’ said Attila. ‘Right out of the dustbin, into Nowhere.’
‘You’re mad, you are,’ said Lucille. ‘We can’t live out there.’
‘Yes we can. Where do you think we came from in the first place?’
‘The Big Fish,’ said Lucille. ‘We came from inside The Big Fish.’
‘No, no,’ said Attila, ‘where did flies come from before that?’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Lucille.
Attila couldn’t think of the right words to say. He wasn’t even sure there were any right words; but the one thing he was sure of was that if they didn’t leave, they would starve. Lucille understood this and although she was terrified she waited with Attila under the rim and the next time the lid was lifted they flew out into Nowhere.
Inside the dustbin it had always been damp and cool. It had always been dark too, except when the sky lifted and more food fell in. Then there had been a flash of brilliant light like an exploding sun.
Now it was all brilliant light. At first Attila and Lucille were completely blinded. They flew frantically upwards expecting to hit something at any moment but there was nothing there. As their eyes became accustomed to the sunshine, they saw the roof of the house below them and flew down to the sea of grey slates and rested. Far below them a child had just put the dustbin lid back and was going into the house.
‘Is this heaven then?’ said Lucille nervously.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Attila. ‘I think you have to be dead to go to heaven and I don’t think we are.’
Flies don’t live long enough to sit and think about things too much. It’s light, it’s dark. It’s hot, it’s cold. This rat’s leg tastes delicious. They never have to think about money or clean shoes. Life for flies is very simple. Attila and Lucille’s mother had told them that the inside of the dustbin was the whole universe and they had believed her. After all, it was obvious, the inside of the dustbin was all they could see.
But now they were outside and they could see a lot more. The
y could see that their dustbin was just one small space in one small garden and that each house down the street had a dustbin of its own.
‘So much for listening to Mum,’ said Attila.
‘Yeah,’ said Lucille, ‘what did she know. She was only two weeks older than us.’
‘Two weeks is a long time,’ said Attila. ‘It’s nearly a lifetime.’
‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ said Lucille. ‘Let’s have lunch.’
They flew across the garden in a great sweeping curve that they never could have done inside the dustbin. An old chicken was scratching about in the grass and round her feet five yellow chicks darted about like fluffy beetles. The chicken was picking up slugs and feeding them to her children, but as soon as she turned her back the children spat them out. The two bluebottles had never eaten slug before.
‘It’s quite nice,’ said Attila, ‘but not as good as fish heads.’
‘They’re probably too fresh,’ said Lucille. ‘If you kept them in rotten egg for a week or two they’d probably taste better.’
After lunch they went and sat on the kitchen window sill. The sun had made the stone warm and the two flies felt quite drowsy.
‘Do you suppose everything Mum told us was untrue?’ said Lucille.
‘How do you mean?’ asked Attila.
‘You know. All that stuff about The Big Fish,’ said Lucille.
‘What, and the inside of the dustbin being the whole world?’ said Attila.
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, I suppose it must have been,’ said Attila. ‘After all, when you think about it, it does all seem ridiculous.’
‘You mean there’s no Giant Flypaper and no Killer Aerosol?’ said Lucille sarcastically.
‘No, of course not,’ said Attila. The two bluebottles laughed so much that all their eyes watered. Someone opened the window behind them and a thick sweet sugary smell drifted out. It rolled over them like a dream and made them feel quite giddy. They flew onto the window frame and looked into the kitchen. In the middle of the table was a thick warm lemon meringue pie fresh from the oven.
Wild Stories Page 11