It Wasn’t Me!

by Michael Bond

  Meaning, I suppose, that if I’m not careful I shan’t see my tenth birthday next year. Just because I’d opened all the doors on her advent calendar to see what was underneath. I bet if I wasn’t around any more she’d be sorry. I bet she’d cry herself to sleep. Big sisters are like that. I might try disappearing one day, just to see what happens. I bet her pillow would be sopping wet by morning and the feathers would go hard and she’d wake up with ear-ache, which would serve her right.

  The trouble with nicknames is, once people start using them they’re hard to get rid of. Though first names you’ve been landed with are even worse. I think children should be allowed a trial period, and when they get to the age of eight they can start afresh if they want to.

  Reg Dwight is a good example. I don’t know how old he was when he changed his name to Elton John, but look where it got him!

  Apparently when my dad first started going out with Mum, she had a thing about the royal family. Before I was born she had a big crush on Prince Harry, but she wasn’t alone in that: he’d been voted the sexiest man in the world. Apparently Dad used to say he was all right if you like that kind of thing, but when she wanted to call me Harry, he couldn’t stand it any longer.

  However, he took a close look at me and said, ‘A miss is as good as a mile,’ and he looked much happier after that.

  Prince Harry was on the early evening news the other day and in my rush to see what all the fuss was about, the brightness knob came away in my hand. Just like the one belonging to the kidnappers in my dream. That’s the trouble with knobs – they’re always coming off. I think they must all be made by the same people. I was about to hide ours under an armchair when, as ill luck would have it, Dad arrived home.

  ‘Oh!’ he shouted as he picked it up. ‘What have we here? A flying knob. We seem to be plagued by them in this house. And I bet I know who was nowhere near this one when it fell off.’

  Mind you, that dates our television as well. There aren’t many sets with knobs on these days. Dad thinks that’s why they invented the remote control – because it’s easier than making knobs that don’t come away in your hand.

  He says there’s nothing ‘remote’ about ours. It’s much too handy for his liking. In his view it has to be the worst invention ever. ‘Some people, mentioning no names’ – but he was looking at me when he said it – ‘some Button Pressers will keep changing channels every five seconds.’

  I suppose I’m lucky in a way. Most people only have one name for the whole of their life, but I’ve got lots.

  If you ask me, that’s why babies cry in church when they’re being baptized. They simply don’t like the sound of their name and don’t fancy hearing it repeated for the rest of their life.

  Anyway, back to my being called Harry. I happen to like it myself. I’m not sure what I would change my name to if I became really famous.

  The reason I’m telling you all this is because I was given a John Wayne cowboy outfit last Christmas, which is how I came by the nickname Trigger for a while.

  Now you may well ask who or what was John Wayne and I must admit he was before my time, so it wasn’t until I read about him on the box that I found out. I think it must have been very old stock because the box was brown round the edges, but it turned out that he was a famous film star in the good old days. In his films he often played a sheriff so he always came out on top in the end. I think it must be nice being a sheriff, having a badge and a horse and being able to shoot people without being told off. It’s a funny thing, but I often wonder what they did in the evenings. There were lots of pictures inside the box to give you an idea.

  To start with, there wasn’t a television to be seen, not even in the living room. I suppose they just sat on their horse all day long waiting for something to happen.

  He was quick on the draw, though. One moment his six-shooter was in its holster. Then, before you had time to blink, it was pointing straight at the villain as he came round a corner into the main street. After he’d shot people he always blew the smoke away from the end of the barrel, then twirled the gun round his finger several times before putting it back in its holster.

  Mind you, John wasn’t his real name either. His real name was Marion. I don’t blame him for changing it. If you happened to be a sheriff, you would, wouldn’t you? You can’t have a proper shoot-out with someone if your name’s Marion. No one would take you seriously.

  Somehow I can’t picture Dad as a sheriff. He’s more of a nine-to-five person. I don’t think he would like being called out in the night to catch some cattle rustlers.

  Anyway, my outfit came with a gun that went off bang. It was only caps, of course, but indoors it sounded just like the real thing. It didn’t half make people jump when I crept up behind them, especially if they were just nodding off after lunch. It almost got taken away from me that same day. I’d just nearly given my Auntie Beatrice, who was staying with us, a heart attack and I was practising twirling it round like John Wayne did in his films, when it came off my finger and went straight through the dining-room window.

  People who mend windows don’t half charge a lot for coming out on Christmas Day. I bet if Mum had been married to John Wayne, he wouldn’t have spent the whole evening grumbling about the price of things like Dad did.

  Auntie Beatrice left soon after dawn on Boxing Day, so Dad took us all out to see some friends of his who live in the next village. He said the fresh air would do us good.

  We arrived as they were all going off to church. I liked Dad’s friend, but I didn’t think much of his wife. She was dressed up to the nines, as though she was going to a wedding. I heard Mum whisper to Dad that she looked like mutton dressed up as lamb, and I could tell she wished she hadn’t let me wear my cowboy outfit.

  They had a son called Graham who’s the same age as me, and funnily enough he’d also been given a gun for Christmas, so he brought it with him and let me play with it. It was one up on mine. Mine’s a double-action army Frontier model. His was the Colt single-action army 1873, Sheriff model.

  Now, this may not mean much to you, but the difference between single- and double-action guns is that with double action you have to pull the trigger twice – once to cock it and then once more to rotate the cylinder so that you have a bullet lined up in front of the firing pin. All you need to do with an SAA 1873 is pull the trigger once and it sets everything in motion – including firing the bullet.

  I must admit I didn’t know that myself at the time, although I do now of course, because that was how it came to go off in the middle of the sermon. I was as surprised as anyone.

  The whole congregation leaped to its feet; all those who didn’t throw themselves on the floor, that is. The vicar crossed himself when he saw the end of the gun pointing towards him over the top of a pew. Well, you’ve got to take aim at something, or someone; otherwise there’s no fun in it.

  All the same, I don’t think crouching down behind the pulpit is a very good example of turning the other cheek, which was what he’d just been preaching about. After he had recovered, he changed it to what happens to people who fall victim to temptation and carry guns.

  He should talk! When it got near the end of the service, it struck me that he was spending a long time over preparing the bread and the wine; especially the wine. He kept looking over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching.

  It was the same with the mince pies on offer as we filed out of the church. I was all for joining in but my Big Sister wasn’t having any of it.

  ‘Go away!’ she cried in a loud voice as I gave her a nudge. ‘I’ve never seen you before in my life!’

  ‘Fancy letting anyone take a gun into church,’ hissed my mum, glaring at Graham’s mum’s back.

  ‘Fancy lending it to Harry in the first place,’ said Dad, glaring at Graham’s back.

  ‘Well, it is Christmas after all,’ said Dad’s friend, glaring at him.

  ‘Try telling that to the vicar,’ said Mum. ‘He didn’t look as though
he was exactly full of good cheer to me. Look at the way he’s scowling at all of us now.’

  It was while we were going out through the gate that I caught a gleam of metal and spotted a man behind the bushes. I think he may have been after some rabbits. I expect, like everyone else, he was fed up with turkey every year.

  ‘Quick! Down, everyone!’ I shouted. ‘He’s got a gun!’

  Well, Mum and Dad and my Big Sister carried on as usual. But their friends – well, ex-friends really – I’ve never seen anyone jump like it. I think it must have been on account of their being in a nervous state already. Graham’s mum just threw herself down, and as ill luck would have it, she landed right in the middle of a puddle. Gloves . . . hat . . . everything . . . ended up covered in black mud. Instead of looking as though she had been to a wedding, she looked as though she’d spent the night at a rock concert. It’s like I’ve always said. There’s no point in wearing things that show the dirt. It’s asking for trouble.

  ‘It’s you again,’ said the vicar as he bent down to help her up. ‘I might have known!’

  Guess what? He wasn’t even looking at her when he said it. He was staring straight at me. I could smell the wine on his breath from where I was standing.

  ‘May you be forgiven,’ he said, although he didn’t sound as if he meant it.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I think you’ve spilled something red down the front of your surplice.’ They say who laughs last laughs loudest.

  The vicar turned to Dad. ‘Do you good people live locally?’ he asked, between his teeth. ‘I don’t recall seeing you before.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Dad. ‘You won’t be seeing us again in a hurry.’

  I’ve never seen a vicar cheer up so quickly. ‘Peace be with you, my son,’ he said, laying a hand on my head. ‘You should go far.’ He didn’t actually say the further the better, but I could tell what he was thinking.

  ‘Amen to that,’ breathed my Big Sister.

  The vicar turned to Mum and Dad. ‘We of the cloth should practise what we preach. Tolerance is everything. Let bygones be bygones.’

  ‘I think he’s right,’ I said as I climbed into the back seat of the car. ‘I think everyone ought to be more tolerant. Especially at Christmas.’

  And you know what? Nobody, not even Dad, said a word all the way home. I think I might become a vicar when I grow up. Either that or a man who mends windows on Christmas Day.

  3

  Seeing Stars

  MIND YOU, A cowboy outfit wasn’t the only present I had for Christmas; not by a long chalk.

  I had a radio-controlled Peugeot rally car set with an extra set of slick tyres and a sprint motor. The only trouble was, I needed four batteries and, would you believe it, there wasn’t one in the house.

  ‘Show me something that doesn’t need batteries,’ groaned Dad. ‘Especially on Christmas Day. I think if a mobile electrician selling batteries toured the streets over Christmas he wouldn’t have to work again for the rest of the year.’

  I bet Max Masters wouldn’t have given up that easily. He would have cracked open a piece of stone with a fossilized fish in the middle of it and tapped into a supply of electricity. It beats me how he does it. I once borrowed Dad’s hammer and chisel and broke open one of his stones, but I still couldn’t see a way in. I suppose the fish must have been very hungry at the time and taken a wrong turning. It was his best rockery stone too!

  If you ask me, fish know a lot more than we give them credit for. Take electric eels, for instance. Do you know any human being who can generate his or her own electricity? I asked our science teacher, Miss Jones, whether eels’ tails are negative or positive and she suggested I take a meter with me next time I go swimming at the seaside. I don’t think she knows really, and she won’t let me borrow the school meter. I haven’t been allowed anywhere near it since I took the back off during a science lecture. I like finding out how things work. Or don’t work, as the case may be. It wasn’t my fault the screwdriver slipped.

  My Big Sister gave me some handkerchiefs for Christmas, along with some instructions explaining how to use them, and Aunt Beatrice – the one who was staying with us – gave me a drum. It seemed an odd present for someone who doesn’t like loud noises. Dad thinks it must have been an afterthought when she realized she hadn’t bought me anything. She probably popped into a Tesco on the way.

  It certainly wasn’t very popular with everyone else, especially as it was made of tin.

  It didn’t go down too well with Aunt Beatrice either when I tested it outside her bedroom door at six o’clock the next morning. I’d have thought she would be pleased to be woken up by something she’d given me.

  Thinking about it, that may be another reason why she left so early.

  ‘Do you think she’s got some kind of grudge against us?’ asked Dad as we all stood at the front door waving goodbye. ‘Something we said, perhaps?’

  ‘Ssh!’ said Mum. ‘She hasn’t even started her car yet. Anyway, we mustn’t grumble. At least she’s left early. She’s got one of her headaches coming on.’

  ‘You can tell she’s never had any children,’ said Dad.

  ‘I doubt if she ever will now,’ said Mum. ‘I think she’s been put off for life.’

  At which point I gave a couple of bangs on the drum, just to make her feel good.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ said Dad. ‘She might never come back.’

  It was hard to tell whether he was being serious or not.

  ‘How about opening it up to see where the sound comes from?’ broke in my Big Sister, handing me a tin-opener.

  ‘I was thinking I might start a one-man band,’ I said, treating the remark with the contempt it deserved. ‘Except I can’t find my trumpet anywhere. If you play your cards right, I might get you a ticket for Britain’s Got Talent when I’m on it.’

  ‘If I help you find your trumpet,’ she said, ‘will you promise to go off on a nationwide tour straight away?’

  Sometimes I think she would make a good Attila the Hun in a school play. Talking of which, did you know he spent his life massacring thousands of people and then he got his come-uppance on his wedding night? If you ask me, he probably married someone like my Big Sister, but he’d been so busy with his massacring he hadn’t seen her properly until then. When he woke and saw her close to, he probably died of shock.

  That’s the sort of thing that makes history come alive. It’s the kind of question they don’t ask in exams. If they asked that sort of question, I bet I would come out top of the class in history instead of bottom.

  But my best present, after the cowboy outfit, was something I’d always wanted: a telescope. And better still, when I tore the wrapping off, it turned out to be not just any old telescope, but a special Astro model. It’s got its own in-built digital computer and it’s called a ‘Global Positioning System for the Universe’.

  According to the picture on the side of the box, once it’s been programmed you can see any object in the sky you want simply by pressing a button: star clusters, mountain ranges on the moon, the rings of Saturn . . . In fact, it’s so powerful that on a clear night it’s even possible to home in on the dust lanes in the Andromeda Galaxy!

  Mum got all uptight when I told her on Boxing Day. ‘I don’t want that around the house for a start,’ she said. ‘It’s bad enough as it is when the sun comes out and shows up all the dust motes. They don’t need enlarging.’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Dad, taking my side for once. ‘If Harry spent more time watching the night sky instead of channel-surfing on the television, he might discover a new star and have it named after him. Then he’d be so famous he’d have no need to form a one-man band.’

  ‘Oh, very romantic!’ said my Big Sister, looking up from the mirror I’d given her. Three days she’s had it and it hasn’t cracked yet – it must be made of steel! ‘I mean, brilliant! Imagine being out with a boy and have him look up at the heavens and say, “Do you see what I see? Just to the right of Ju
piter. It’s that new star everybody’s talking about. The one they call Harry.” I’d curl up and die with embarrassment on the spot!’

  Well, that set my mind working straight away.

  ‘If I do discover a new star,’ I said, ‘I might get invited on a manned space mission so that I can take a closer look.’

  ‘If you really strike lucky,’ said my Big Sister, ‘you might discover some primitive form of life when you get there. Some bit of floating ectoplasm you could play conkers with, instead of bothering everyone else. You’d have a lot in common, except you’d be at a disadvantage because it would be a lot more intelligent.’

  ‘You want to watch it,’ I said. ‘Suppose I went on a space walk and got hit by a stray meteor. I might get knocked flying and go into permanent orbit. Think of that!’

  ‘Promises, promises,’ said my Big Sister, going back to what I call ‘Mission Impossible’: trying to make her face look better with the box of make-up she’d been given.

  After that I went upstairs, taking everything with me. Some people must always have the last word. Besides, I couldn’t wait for it to get dark. Have you ever noticed? In the summer when you want it to get dark early, it seems to stay light for ever. Then, in the winter, when you want it to stay light, it seems to get dark before tea time.

  Funny thing, though – while I was in my room, having got fed up with trying to open up my drum, I couldn’t wait any longer, and before it got really dark I did sort of discover a new star. Well, it wasn’t exactly a star, it was more of a heavenly body.

  According to the box, with a Global Positioning System you can see more in twenty minutes than Galileo did in a lifetime. I bet I can beat that.

  I bet he didn’t see what I saw.

  I bet Galileo never saw Gloria Braithwaite in her bedroom. Or even Gloria’s great-great-great-grandmother in hers, come to that, which I suppose is what could have happened had she been staying in Italy at the time and not bothered to draw the curtains.