It Wasn’t Me!

by Michael Bond

  I happened to be looking at Gloria’s bedroom, not for any particular reason, but simply because it’s on the other side of the road from us and in the winter you can see through the trees.

  Then, hey presto! There she was, just as though it was meant. Talk about filling the frame. I bet if the manufacturers put a picture of Gloria on the side of the box the Global Positioning System came in, their sales would rocket. I might write to them and suggest it. I could be her agent.

  Anyway, I couldn’t wait to spread the word. It was too good to keep to myself, especially at Christmas – the so-called season of good will. Besides, what are friends for if you can’t share things with them?

  I think she must have got some new clothes and make-up for Christmas because she kept posing in front of a large mirror. And not any old posing, she was all ‘done up’, dancing and singing into a hairbrush as though it was a microphone! She must have thought she was on Britain’s Got Talent. I nearly dropped the telescope, I was laughing so much.

  Luckily Mum and my Big Sister had gone out food shopping and Dad was taking a nap, so I sent out a lot of text messages on his mobile.

  By the time I’d finished keying Gloria’s exact position into the database, they were all at the door. It being Christmas, everyone was flush with money and they hadn’t had a chance to spend it, so at twenty pence a go I couldn’t fail, especially as most of them wanted seconds and even thirds. My best friend, Gordon, had four goes – but then he would. He’s like that with chocolate cakes. In no time at all I had three pounds fifty.

  It would have been more, except Gloria suddenly spotted us watching her in the mirror and blew her top. I can’t say I blame her, but a cheer went up as she started running around the room like a bat possessed. She was in such a hurry she collided with her stool twice.

  Unfortunately the cheers brought my dad running to see what was going on, and even more unfortunately he arrived at our window at exactly the same moment as Gloria’s mother arrived at hers holding a camera and took a photograph of everyone at our window.

  ‘Hyenas!’ she called.

  So Dad shouldered most of the blame and no one is speaking to anyone any more.

  Talking of bats reminds me – did you know that vampire bats don’t really suck the blood of their victims like most people think they do? Miss Jones says they simply puncture the skin with their razor-sharp incisors and wait till the blood starts running out, then they lap it up. It’s the only thing they can eat without needing indigestion tablets because they don’t have a proper stomach, only a long tube.

  Another thing about bats is, when they’ve finished their dinner or whatever they call it in bat language, they don’t need a toothbrush. They simply hang upside down on a convenient ledge, like the sort you get under a bathroom mirror. Then they hold on with one foot while they clean their teeth with the other.

  I think things like that are interesting.

  I must say that for Miss Jones. Apart from knowing all about bats, she does have a lovely set of gnashers. I sometimes wonder if she hangs upside down at night when she goes to bed. If she lived close enough, I might be able to key her into my Global Positioning System as well and find out. I could have asked double rates from all my friends, except it’s been confiscated!

  ‘What bothers me,’ said Mum, later that day, ‘is who’s been at my tin-opener while we’ve been out . . . For some reason it’s all bent!’

  I tell you, there’s never a dull moment in our house.

  4

  Pets

  I THINK IF I was ever lucky enough to have a pet, it wouldn’t be a dog or a cat, it would be a pig. The other day Miss Jones was telling us that Sir Winston Churchill, who was our Prime Minister during World War II, once said that whereas dogs look up to us and cats look down on us, pigs treat us as equals.

  It must be nice to be treated as an equal. By the sound of it, we would have won the war even sooner if Sir Winston had had a pig alongside him. I bet they would have got on together like a house on fire.

  Which reminds me . . . I haven’t told you about the time I nearly burned the school down. I was in a play about a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament and I was given the part of Guy Fawkes.

  ‘Talk about asking for trouble,’ said my Big Sister. ‘Some people never learn.’

  It wasn’t much of a part. All I had to do was light a pretend bomb and throw it through one of the windows. Nobody said anything about my using pretend matches as well. Luckily it happened during rehearsals – otherwise it might have been worse.

  Do you know what it said in my end-of-term school report that year?

  They enclosed a bill for the scenery, but Dad wasn’t having any of it. He’s good at saying ‘No’. Like the time we had a bad meal in a big restaurant: when the bill came, he told them he was giving them what he thought it was worth – no more and no less. It turned out to be a lot less than they had in mind, and they called the police, but the police took one look at what was left on our plates and said they didn’t blame him. To make matters worse, everyone else in the restaurant had been listening in and they all started doing the same thing. We haven’t been back since. I think Dad’s worried about what they might do to anything he orders, especially if it happens to be soup. He might not know until it’s too late and he’s at death’s door.

  If you ask me, the fire at the school was worse than it might have been because they didn’t have an emergency button.

  My great-grandma’s got an emergency button and she doesn’t even put on plays. It’s big and red and she keeps it by the front door just in case. She lives by herself in the country where you meet all sorts of things you don’t see in London: owls and sheep and things called peasants. The first time I went to stay with her by myself I went outside to do some exploring and I met a ginormous worm on the front path. That’s when I ran back indoors and pressed the button.

  I was expecting my great-grandma to come to my rescue. Instead of which I heard bells in the distance. The sound got closer and closer and in the end a fire engine turned up.

  My great-grandma couldn’t believe it. ‘You’ve only been here five minutes,’ she said.

  ‘Twelve,’ I said. ‘It took the fire engine seven minutes to get here. I timed it.’

  I don’t think the fire-fighters minded too much. It’s what’s known as a volunteer fire brigade, which means they all have other jobs. So they got time off work and my great-grandma gave them coffee and cakes.

  ‘You must come again next year,’ one of them said to me.

  I thought my great-grandma would be cross with me after they left, but all she said was: ‘At least we know it works.’ And she gave me a wink as though it was a secret between the two of us. She’s like that.

  Soon after that it was half-term and I went to spend the day with my grandparents. ‘When do you go back?’ asked Papa, who is really my grandfather (nicknames run in our family), as he opened the front door.

  Grown-ups are like that. Even the best ones. They never say, ‘How nice! It’s half-term again.’ It’s always: ‘When do you go back?’

  Anyway, I was telling them all about how the scenery caught fire.

  ‘I suppose you were nowhere near it at the time,’ said Papa.

  I know why he said that. It was because soon after I arrived at their house he found the coffee machine switched on. Well, I saw this button sticking out and I couldn’t resist it.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ he said. ‘I’d better phone the police. I’ll tell them we’ve got this funny fault. The red light on our coffee machine keeps coming on all by itself.’

  And he did too. He picked up the telephone and he dialled a number. I hung around looking out of the front window for a police car, but no one turned up. Thinking about it afterwards, I suspect it was only a pretend call.

  Papa is always doing things like that. Like the time he explained to me how they make pasteurized milk.

  He picked up a milk bottle, passed it in front of me and said
, ‘There you are. It’s been past your eyes.’

  I tried it out on our science mistress, Miss Jones, but she didn’t seem to think it was at all funny. I suppose it’s the way you tell them.

  I like staying with my grandparents, and not just because Dad says it’s good for them. He says it makes them appreciate what other people have to go through in life.

  You can do things with grandparents that you wouldn’t be allowed to do at home.

  Mind you, they’re funny people. Papa has a front doorbell, but he always grumbles if anyone uses it after six o’clock. He says things like, ‘Don’t go,’ and ‘Pretend we’re not in.’

  I think he’s frightened it might be someone selling dusters. I don’t blame him. Grandma’s got a whole cupboard full. Every time she opens the door they all fall out.

  It’s the same with the telephone when Papa’s watching EastEnders. ‘Who’s that ringing up at this time of night?’ he says. ‘Pretend we’re out.’

  Papa often says, give me five minutes in his house and NOTHING works. He says by the time I’ve been there for a day he has to get all his manuals out to make everything work again.

  He also says certain key words affect me. Words like: WET PAINT; DANGER – KEEP OUT; KEEP OFF THE GRASS and DON’T TOUCH; especially DON’T TOUCH.

  I have to admit he’s right about the last one. I think it’s asking for trouble. If they put something like TOUCH THIS AS MUCH AS YOU LIKE, they wouldn’t have anything to worry about.

  I’ll give you an example. The other day Sue (I call Grandma Sue because she said I could) was baking some cakes. When she took them out of the oven, she turned to me and said: ‘They’re hot, Harry. Whatever you do, don’t touch them.’

  So of course I did – I mean, what did she expect? It so happened the one I poked my finger into was RED HOT. And do you know what? I didn’t get any sympathy. She said it served me right and Papa said he hoped it wasn’t his cake because he’d been looking forward to it; it was a good job I didn’t work in a bakery because a cake fresh out of the oven is a bit like the world – the further inside you go, the hotter it gets. Which was not what I wanted to hear at all. Anyway, who would want to poke their finger inside the world? Apart from being made to clean your nails for days afterwards, you’d need a ginormously long one to reach right into the middle. It’s over 6,000 kilometres deep at the equator.

  As it was, it’s lucky for them my finger didn’t melt. They would have been really sorry if it had and I’d been left with only four. I said Mum and Dad wouldn’t let me go to stay with them ever again if that had happened, but it didn’t seem to worry them. All the same, I expect it has put them off home-made cakes for ever after, because it will always remind them of what might have happened.

  ‘It isn’t fair,’ I said.

  ‘Well, at least you’ve learned something today,’ said Papa as Sue dipped my finger in cold water and then put a bandage on it. ‘Life isn’t fair from the moment you’re born. You have to ride over these things,’

  After that I thought perhaps I might earn some Brownie points by helping Sue with some more cakes she was making.

  The trouble with chocolate cakes, especially if you are standing on a chair, is that if you happen to switch the mixer on before you put the top on, you get brown splodges all over the wall. I think they ought to invent a mixer which can’t do that. If they can put a man on the moon, they ought to be able to do something simple like fit some kind of chocolate mix sensor on a kitchen mixer. Either that or people should only make cakes that match the colour of their walls.

  I like helping in the kitchen. For some reason I’m not allowed to at home. The last time I joined in I caught Mum kicking the fridge when she thought I wasn’t looking. She broke her toe, and it didn’t do the fridge door a lot of good. Looking at her, you would think butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and she would never do a thing like that, but you never know with grown-ups. One moment they’re all sweetness and light, the next it’s a case of running for cover.

  You can tell what sort of mood Papa is in by the kind of songs he sings. The other day I heard him singing something like ‘An apple for the teacher, to show I’m meek and mild, and that I really am not just a problem child. You’re going to get all my affection, your wish will be my rule . . .’

  I know what would happen if I gave an apple to my teacher. She’d send it to an analyst to make sure it hadn’t been poisoned.

  Sometimes when I’m staying with them, Papa sings things like ‘Many Brave Hearts Are Asleep in the Deep’ and I know that means trouble. One day when I could see he was feeling a bit down, I offered to make him a risotto. I even wrote out the recipe for him. It was one I’d come across in a book.

  l onion

  About 6 sausages

  l cup of rice

  Palmerston cheese

  l teespone thyme

  ‘I hope it tastes better than it spells,’ said Papa.

  ‘Don’t you mean smells?’ I said.

  ‘I know what I mean,’ said Papa, and he fell about laughing. He quite often laughs at his own jokes. Sometimes he’s the only person who does. But at least the thought had cheered him up.

  In the end I didn’t make it because Sue didn’t have the right kind of cheese. She only had Gruyere. I always called it Grulio. One day Mum went into a famous cheese shop and by mistake asked for 250 grams of Grulio.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re out of it at the moment,’ said the man. ‘We’re expecting some in any day.’

  Afterwards Mum said it was very nice of him because she could tell he didn’t want her to feel embarrassed in front of all the other customers, but I don’t think he knew what he was talking about. As we left, I saw him looking in a book.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Papa when he came in from the garden. ‘Sue hasn’t got the cheese and I don’t have the thyme. Anyway there’s nothing that two days in a darkened room won’t cure.’ Once again he started laughing.

  It was while Sue was scrubbing the wall to get rid of the chocolate stains that I heard her say something that set me thinking. ‘What Harry needs,’ she said, ‘is some kind of pet.’

  ‘A piranha fish?’ suggested Papa. ‘Preferably one that hasn’t been fed for a long time. He could play with it in the bath.’

  ‘At least he wouldn’t be able to put his finger in the water,’ said Sue. ‘But I’m being serious. He needs something to keep his mind occupied.’

  Which is really how I came to meet Mortimer. That, and Mum’s new car. I think in a strange kind of way the two coming together must have been meant.

  That’s one of the nice things about Papa. He understands what children like and I told him so.

  ‘You’re as old as you feel,’ he announced.

  I asked him how old he felt.

  ‘A hundred and five,’ he said as he waved goodbye.

  5

  A Strange Sighting

  YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING what Mum getting a new car had to do with my getting a pig. Well, it all came about because she couldn’t wait to take us out for a drive and we got lost.

  Have you ever noticed how grown-ups often have disagreements when they’re together in a car? Get them sitting behind a wheel, or even alongside it, and they become different people. And another thing: it’s almost always the one who isn’t driving who sets it off.

  If it was a competition, my dad would win hands down. He’s got it down to a fine art. He waits until exactly the right moment, like when Mum’s going round Hyde Park Corner during the evening rush hour. Then he says, ‘Why are you still in third?’

  I bet whoever invented the automatic gear box did it because he couldn’t stand the way his partner drove when she went round Hyde Park Corner. Dad says you should never catch anyone else’s eye, but Mum’s always waving to people and letting them go first, which they all do, of course. It takes us ages to get round sometimes.

  Another favourite ploy of Dad’s is when Mum suddenly asks which exit she needs to take at the next rounda
bout. (I think he keeps it for when we’re in the country – preferably on a bank holiday.)

  He comes up with something simple like: ‘The one heading north.’

  Mum always takes the bait and says: ‘Which way is north?’

  That does it. Dad gives a snort and gets going with things like: ‘It’s a good job you’re not in charge of a polar expedition. Imagine all those huskies trying to pull a sledge along the front at Brighton on a Saturday afternoon in August.’

  By then we’ve been round the roundabout twice and are heading back the way we came.

  After that he starts making sucking noises through his teeth and saying: ‘That was a narrow squeak!’ Then if Mum says, ‘But there was no one else around,’ he comes back with: ‘I was talking about the kerb.’

  Then there’s parking. Mum only needs to say, ‘Where shall we park?’ and he comes out with: ‘Well, you’re driving.’ Then he washes his hands of the whole thing and starts fiddling with the radio to see if there’s anything more interesting to listen to while she makes up her mind.

  The thing is, it takes a while because Mum isn’t very good at getting into small spaces so she usually drives around looking for what she calls ‘a suitable gap’. Then, when she finds one, that sets Dad off again: ‘Lucky you got the last three spaces,’ and ‘Which meter would you like me to feed – the one up the road or the one you’ve just hit with the back bumper?’

  It’s funny how two people can live together for years and yet still not know the simplest things about each other. Like my Uncle Ernest and Auntie Mamie. They’ve had a car all their lives – something called a Morris Oxford. Uncle Ernest always says they don’t make cars like that these days. I won’t tell you what Dad says.

  Anyway, I don’t think they had ever been out in it after dark on account of Auntie Mamie not seeing too well. Then one day they lost their way and found themselves in a tunnel. It was a long one, and by the time they came out the other end they weren’t speaking to each other, which wasn’t surprising because everyone who saw them afterwards said they were like two different people.