by Michael Bond
Soon after that they sold the car.
I think when people get married they ought to fill in questionnaires. Like the sort my dad sometimes gets, with lots of little boxes to tick. (They usually say this will only take a few minutes of your time, but he gets cross because it takes him all evening and he wishes he’d never started.) The other thing about them is they say things like: the sender of the first one to be opened will receive a gift, but he’s never got anything yet.
All it would need is some simple questions about things every couple ought to know. Questions like: ‘Do you know where the light switch is on your car? Do either of you suffer from claustrophobia? Fear of the dark? Oncoming headlights?’
In Auntie Mamie’s case it would have been one cross for ‘No’, followed by three ticks, but Uncle Ernest didn’t know that until they were in the tunnel and it was too late.
I was thinking about all that, and people in general, when I suddenly came to and realized that Mum and Dad were talking to each other through gritted teeth, which is usually a bad sign, especially when they start calling each other ‘dear’.
When you come to think about it, ‘gritting your teeth’ is a funny expression. I mean, they grit roads to stop cars skidding when it’s icy, but teeth! I suppose it’s to stop them skidding when they come together on all that saliva.
Nature’s interesting that way. I’ll tell you something about saliva. According to Miss Jones, it’s got a chemical in it that’s good for healing wounds. That’s why some people, especially mothers, say things like ‘Let me kiss it better’ when you fall over on your roller skates. I wouldn’t fancy kissing my Big Sister’s knees better, but that makes two of us. It’s also supposed to be good for cleaning things – which is how the saying ‘spit and polish’ came about.
Going back to teeth, I think my great-grandpa had the right idea. He used to take his teeth out at night, which must have been very useful. He never had to have them filled, and he never, ever had toothache. I don’t know why they did away with false teeth. I asked my dentist and he said he could arrange some for me on the spot. Then I wouldn’t need to visit him again. But that was after I’d broken his chair. It served him right for leaving me alone with it. I was trying to see how high I could make it go and it got jammed. I suppose he didn’t like having to stand on a box.
I asked Miss Jones about that too, and she said they probably did away with false teeth so that dentists could get even richer. She says that plug-in teeth may be the next thing. She says we live in an age when nothing gets repaired, it just gets replaced, and that human beings may be like that one day. You’ll be able to go into a shop and buy a new plug-in arm or liver.
She also told us that the average fully grown human generates 1.5 litres of saliva every twenty-four hours. I don’t know how they measured it unless they got someone to go around drooling into a glass all day, but who’s to argue? I reckon my dad must have got through about five litres the day we got lost.
‘Name me just one famous woman navigator, dear,’ he was saying.
‘Amy Johnson, dear,’ said Mum, quick as a flash. ‘She flew all the way from Croydon to Australia by herself in just over nineteen days.’
‘She probably only wanted to go to Guildford,’ said Dad.
After that no one said anything for a while. ‘Anyway,’ said Dad, in the kind of voice he uses to show he was right all the time, ‘what kept her? I mean, nineteen days. A man would have done it in a tenth of the time.’
‘Not in 1930 they wouldn’t have,’ said Mum.
It was at that point that she suggested he drive the car. It was either that or we all walked home and left it in the lay-by she had turned into by mistake.
After that all was quiet again for a bit until Dad suddenly said: ‘Where are we?’
‘You’re driving,’ said Mum, getting her own back. ‘You should know.’
‘You’ve got the road atlas, dear,’ said Dad, gritting his teeth again. ‘Haven’t you been following the route?’
Well, it went to and fro like that for a while and I didn’t take much notice until I suddenly realized Dad was talking to me.
‘How about you having a go, Harry?’ he said. ‘You know all about Global Positioning. See what you can do with this.’ And he thrust a great book into my arms.
‘Easy peasy,’ I said. ‘Leave it to me. Where are we?’
‘What do you mean where are we?’ said Dad. ‘That’s what I’m asking you.’
Well, I mean . . . What’s the point of having a book of road maps if it doesn’t tell you where you are?
‘I can see a signpost saying “Mortimer three miles”,’ said Mum, looking out of the window.
‘There you are,’ said Dad. ‘All you’ve got to do is look for Mortimer on the map and we’re home and dry.’
Well, that was all very well, but I soon discovered another thing about maps.
It doesn’t matter what place you want to look up, it’s always on a join. I found Mort, but when I looked for an imer to join on the end, I couldn’t see it anywhere. Then I discovered that although I’d been on page 14, the next bit of the map was on page 72 because it had started off again on the other side of England.
‘It’s no wonder people go off on expeditions and never get heard of again,’ I said.
‘When was the last time you heard of anyone going off on an expedition and disappearing off the face of the earth?’ said Dad.
That set my Big Sister off. Up until then she’d been sitting in the back trying to paint stars on her fingernails – which isn’t easy when Dad’s driving and he’s in a bad mood, I can tell you.
‘I can think of a good candidate right now,’ she said pointedly.
I looked out of the window in case there was another signpost I could try, and that was when I saw them: a girl with what looked like a small black and white dog waddling along after her on the end of a lead. Except that it wasn’t a dog. It had a flat black nose at one end, more of a snout really, a tiny curly tail at the other, and a leg at all four corners.
‘Did you see that?’ I cried. ‘Did you see that? It looked just like a pig going for a walk.’
‘Brilliant,’ said my Big Sister, using her know-all voice. ‘Ten out of ten. It was a miniature Chinese pot-bellied pig. You don’t see many of those about. Despite the fact that they’ve been domesticated ever since the tenth century.’
‘The first book about them was written over five thousand years ago,’ agreed Dad, taking his eyes off the road for a moment.
Suddenly everything fell into place. I knew what I wanted most of all in my life. Even more than a new skateboard. I even knew what I would call it if I had one. I think names are important, especially if you’re a pig and don’t have very much else.
‘If I had a pig like that,’ I said, ‘I’d call it Mortimer.’
‘You’re not having one,’ said Mum, reading my thoughts. ‘I can tell you that for a start. Besides, where would it do its whatsits?’
‘Its “whatsits”?’ I repeated. ‘What are “whatsits”?’
There was a groan from my Big Sister. ‘You’d find out soon enough if you had to clear up after it.’
‘I know who’d end up doing that,’ said Mum. ‘It would be like Harold the hamster all over again.’
‘Hamsters are boring,’ I said. ‘They don’t do anything except go round and round on their wheel all day. Harold never did anything interesting like going for walks on a lead.’
After that I couldn’t wait to go home. As soon as we got indoors I added ‘Chinese pot-bellied pig’ to my birthday list. I left it lying around for days, but nobody said anything.
Then, after my birthday had been and gone and there was still no sign of one, I decided to take matters into my own hands, and one day I settled down to start thinking it through.
My Big Sister noticed it first. ‘You want to watch out,’ she said. ‘All that brainwork just after breakfast. You’ll do yourself a mischief. Anyway,’ she demanded when
she could see I wasn’t listening, ‘if you got a pot-bellied pig, what would you feed it on?’
‘He can share my Mars bars,’ I said. ‘Boiled sweets. Odd scraps. Anything I can get hold of.’
She gave a sniff. ‘You want to think again,’ she said. ‘They’re not like ordinary pigs. If you don’t believe me, go and get a book out of the library. Better still, get him a library ticket, then he can do it himself. You’ll only make a mess of it!’
You wait, I thought. Just you wait!
6
Wishing Will Make It So
HAVE YOU EVER tried getting a book on miniature Chinese pot-bellied pigs at your local library? It’s worse than trying to get through to Fort Knox. I should know. I’ve tried both.
I expect you’re wondering why I wanted to phone Fort Knox. Well, it was to do with a bet I had with Gordon. It all started when I said that I could see inside anywhere in the world with my Global Positioning System. All I had to do was key in its exact position on the map. He said I couldn’t because it didn’t see round corners, and because the world was round and America was over three thousand miles away it wouldn’t be possible anyway.
I said, ‘The trouble with you, Gordon, is you believe everything you’re told.’
So he said: ‘All right then, show me the inside of Fort Knox.’ We were doing American history at the time, which I chose because they haven’t got very much. Not like us. (I think we’ve got far too much.)
I had to give up in the end. I don’t think anyone in Fort Knox knew where they were, or if they did they weren’t letting on. When I phoned them, they kept telling me to hang on. And that’s another thing. What I didn’t know at the time was that nowadays when the telephone bill comes in, it lists all the numbers that have been dialled. I’d rung Fort Knox so many times, Dad got a note asking if we would like to add the number to our list of calls for what they call CHEAP RATES.
You should have seen his face at breakfast when he read it. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He jabbed so hard with his teaspoon, it went right through the bottom of his boiled egg!
Anyway, back to Mortimer. Like my Big Sister suggested, first of all I tried the public library. I managed to get out during the school lunch hour. The best thing about that was, I won Brownie points because I asked for permission. Which only goes to show there’s good in everything. After that it was downhill all the way.
Mistake number one was telling the man at the desk that my Big Sister told me he was the best person to come to if I wanted to learn all about pot-bellied pigs on account of the fact that he looked like one.
If you think my dad was cross when he heard about my telephone calls to Fort Knox, he had nothing on the man at the library. I’ve heard of road rage, but his was ten times worse. You’d think with a name like ‘public library’ they’d be glad when people came in asking them things.
I must say, looking back on it, he did have a face that was rather like a pig. Luckily I didn’t give up. School seemed to last for ever that day, but as soon as the bell went, I rushed out and went straight back to the library. This time there was a girl behind the counter. She recognized me straight away.
‘If you want the latest Max Masters,’ she said, ‘you’re out of luck. It’s set in France and it’s all about the Eiffel Tower. There’s been a run on it, with the Easter holidays coming up.’
So I decided to try a different tack. Looking over my shoulder in case her boss overheard, I said I was wanting a book for a friend.
‘He’ll need a ticket,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you a form for him to sign. Is he a ratepayer?’
I nearly gave the game away by saying that pigs didn’t pay rates, but I stopped myself just in time. ‘I don’t think he’s old enough,’ I said.
‘Do you know his date of birth?’ she asked.
That was an even harder question to answer.
‘Nobody knows,’ I said. Well, I wasn’t going to say it was me all the time.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘That’s not a very good start in life. Does he have a name?’
‘Mortimer,’ I said. ‘Mortimer Manners.’
‘Mortimer Manners,’ repeated the girl. ‘That’s very alliterative.’
‘I don’t suppose he’s ever been to school,’ I said.
She gave me a funny look at that point and explained that alliterative didn’t mean he couldn’t read or write, it meant having words beginning with the same letter.
You learn something new every day.
‘It’s too late to change it now,’ I said. ‘The thing is, he’s not very good at reading, so I promised I would look some things up for him.’
It was the girl’s turn to glance over her shoulder. ‘Why don’t you find what you want,’ she said. ‘Then bring it to me and I’ll make some copies for him.’
Which is what I ended up doing. It took me a long time because I didn’t know where to start, but in the end I found a book on pot-bellied pigs in a tiny section called ‘Pets (Exotic)’. I don’t think anyone had ever had it out before because it looked all new and shiny and there were no dates stamped inside to say it should have been returned three weeks ago, like there usually are in my Big Sister’s books.
But I found out all I wanted to know. It was all down in black and white. As you might expect, pot-bellied pigs don’t really mind what they eat, but for a treat they like grapes and sliced apple. In fact, they’re keen on most kinds of fruit, especially avocados and bananas.
They also like unsalted popcorn – which is good news because I like that too. I might take Mortimer to the cinema next time I go. But they shouldn’t eat tomatoes or green peppers. Rhubarb plants are poisonous to them, and unlike the nursery rhyme, the little piggy who didn’t have roast beef was better off than the one who did. And did you know that as well as being brushed regularly, they also need oiling? Not with an oil can, as you might think, but with lotion rubbed into the skin.
It was while I was looking through some pictures at the back of the book that it suddenly came to me why they looked so familiar.
I waited while the girl copied the pages for me. Then, after she’d promised to save the Max Masters for me, I dashed out again and made my way to a shop I knew. I must have passed it a trillion times on my way to and from school, and once or twice I’d stopped to look in the window, but I’d never plucked up the courage to go inside.
It’s called Oddments, and for as long as I can remember it’s been closing down. The sign outside saying EVERYTHING MUST GO looks older than the shop.
If you ask me, I think it must have been meant, because I knew that this was where I’d once seen a pig just like the ones in the pictures. I ran the last part of the way because I was frightened it might have gone, but luckily it was still there, sitting on top of a box sandwiched between a painting of an old lady doing her knitting and a large vase.
‘The Chinese pig?’ The man seemed surprised. ‘It’s your lucky day, son,’ he said gravely. ‘There’ve been lots of enquiries about him because he comes fully housetrained. He’s only been hanging fire on account of being difficult to gift wrap. It’s the legs, you know.’ He looked me up and down. ‘How much were you thinking of paying?’
‘How much were you thinking of asking?’ I said, taking a leaf out of Dad’s book. ‘I haven’t got very much money.’
‘I’m not asking two pounds for it,’ he said. ‘I’m not even asking one. He’s yours for fifty p.’
Luckily I had my savings left over from the Gloria episode with me so I was able to pay: he had it inside a carrier bag before I had time to open my mouth.
‘And no bringing it back,’ he shouted after me. ‘We don’t do refunds.’
But I didn’t mind. He was just what I wanted. Until that moment Mortimer had always been a pretend pet; now that I had one for real, I wouldn’t swap him for all the tea in China – except that would be like sending coals to Newcastle seeing as that’s where they come from.
He’s got big round eyes – not like an ordinary
pig’s – and his skin feels as though it’s made of the softest leather. It’s mostly black and he’s got a leg at each corner; exactly like the one I saw when we were out for the drive.
As soon as I got home I took Mortimer upstairs so that I could show him a view of the back garden from the spare-room window. From there you can look down on the patio and see beyond the pergola to the lawn and the flowerbeds beyond. Luckily it’s what they call a walled garden, so he’s not likely to get lost. I pointed out where he could go and where he couldn’t. Mum’s very keen on her flowers and she hates it when plants get trampled on.
Then, seeing as my Big Sister wasn’t home from school yet, I went into her room and picked up a couple of things Mortimer might need. Then I showed him the bathroom, and after that we went back to my bedroom.
I opened up the drawer where I thought he might like to sleep at night, and showed him the trunk where I keep my bits and pieces. Looking around the room, he seemed to like the wallpaper best. I know what he means. It’s got lots of flowers all over it. I don’t know what sort they are, but they’re very good for counting in the summer when it stays light late at night and I can’t get to sleep. I once reached two thousand and seventy-three and I was wide awake by then.
I showed him the view across the road, but there was no sign of Gloria Braithwaite. I wasn’t surprised because I haven’t seen her for ages. She keeps her curtains tightly drawn these days. I told Mortimer he wasn’t missing very much.
Luckily he kept very quiet and didn’t give the game away by grunting or snorting or squealing like pigs often do. I bet he would have squealed if he had seen Gloria.