Never Say Moo to a Bull

by David Henry Wilson

  One of the workers who wasn’t working got up on a box and shouted out ‘Brothers!’ till everyone was quiet. Jeremy James frowned in disbelief.

  ‘They can’t all be his brothers!’ he said to Mummy. ‘They’d never be able to get into the house.’

  ‘They’re not his real brothers,’ said Mummy. ‘It’s just a way of talking.’

  Jeremy James thought it was a silly way of talking, but as these were workers who didn’t work, it was hardly surprising that they were also brothers who weren’t brothers. Jeremy James wondered if the women were sisters who weren’t sisters.

  ‘Brothers,’ said the man on the box, ‘we need more money, we deserve more money, and we shall get more money!’

  Everybody cheered, and Jeremy James cheered too, because he felt exactly the same way about his money. The man on the box went on to say that he was getting the same money as somebody else, but he should be getting more. Then a moment later he said somebody else was getting more money than he was, and that wasn’t fair. And after that he said he didn’t want more money than other people but he and other people should all have more money than everybody else, and nobody should have less than other people but everybody should get more and then it would be fair. Jeremy James found it all rather hard to follow, but he cheered all the same because he was sure the man on the box was on his side.

  On the way home, Jeremy James asked Mummy quite a lot of questions. For instance, he wanted to know just how the non-working workers would get the more money which they deserved. Mummy said that by not working, they hoped to force the people with the money to give them more. Jeremy James thought this meant that the less you worked, the more money you would get, but Mummy said it was all very complicated, and so Jeremy James reckoned it was just another way of talking, like the unworkers and the unbrothers.

  ‘Why doesn’t Daddy go on strike?’ asked Jeremy James. ‘Then he could get more money, too.’

  ‘If Daddy went on strike,’ said Mummy, ‘nobody would notice any difference.’

  That was also pretty hard for Jeremy James to understand. It seemed to him that there would be a big difference between Daddy locked away in his study, and Daddy sitting on the carpet playing trains and soldiers and cowboys. But grown-ups have their own ways of talking and thinking, and Jeremy James could only shake his head and wonder if, when he grew up, he would understand how grown-ups talked and thought.

  At tea, Jeremy James sprang a little surprise on Mummy and Daddy. Mummy asked him to go and fetch a pot of jam.

  ‘No,’ said Jeremy James.

  ‘Pardon?’ said Mummy.

  ‘I’m on strike,’ said Jeremy James.

  Mummy and Daddy looked at each other.

  ‘This is very sudden,’ said Daddy. ‘You might have given us a warning.’

  ‘I only just decided,’ said Jeremy James. ‘I think I deserve more money.’

  ‘Aha,’ said Daddy, ‘don’t we all!’

  ‘And I’m not going to do any more work,’ said Jeremy James, ‘until my wages go up.’

  ‘You’d better get that jam yourself, dear,’ said Daddy to Mummy, ‘we’ve got an industrial crisis on our hands. Now then, Jeremy James, what sort of wages were you thinking of?’

  ‘A hundred pounds a week,’ said Jeremy James. ‘A hundred pounds and . . . fourpence.’

  ‘And fourpence,’ said Daddy. ‘Phew, that’s pretty steep, with that fourpence.’

  ‘Well I think I deserve it,’ said Jeremy James. ‘And other people shouldn’t get more . . . less . . . more than me.’

  ‘You mean,’ said Mummy, ‘you’re not going to do any more work at all?’

  ‘No,’ said Jeremy James, ‘except I might go outside and wave a flag and talk.’

  ‘Who to?’ asked Daddy.

  ‘Some of the brothers,’ said Jeremy James. ‘You know, the brothers who aren’t brothers.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Daddy. ‘Those brothers.’

  When tea was finished, Mummy and Daddy cleared the table, and Jeremy James went and sat in the armchair. Mummy and Daddy knew it was no use asking him to help, because people on strike don’t help anyone – they just unwork until they get their money. He could hear them talking and laughing in the kitchen as they washed the dishes, and he smiled to himself because with a hundred pounds and fourpence he could buy tons and tons of chocolate and toys and sweets as well as a tricycle with a bell and a saddlebag, and all he had to do for the money was nothing – just hours and hours of nothing. Life couldn’t be simpler.

  At bedtime, Jeremy James kissed Mummy and Daddy goodnight, and – as they hadn’t made any further mention of his strike or his money – he asked them when he would be getting his hundred pounds and fourpence.

  ‘Can’t tell you yet,’ said Daddy. ‘There’ll have to be negotiations and committees of inquiry first, and we may even have to go to arbitration . . .’

  Daddy always liked to make up long words when he didn’t want to answer questions. Mummy just said ‘Hmmph’ and ‘We’ll see’ and ‘Goodnight, dear’.

  As he lay in bed, Jeremy James wondered whether perhaps he shouldn’t have asked for a bit more money. A hundred pounds and fourpence had seemed a lot at the time, but there must be people who got even more than that, and the man on the box had certainly said it wasn’t fair if anybody got more than . . . or was it less than . . . anybody else. However, Jeremy James decided that if a hundred pounds and fourpence wasn’t enough, he could always go on strike again later.

  The next morning, Mummy sprang a little surprise on Jeremy James. There was no breakfast.

  ‘No breakfast?’ said Jeremy James.

  ‘I’m on strike,’ said Mummy. ‘Sorry, you’ll have to go without.’

  Sitting at the table was Daddy, and sitting in front of Daddy was a slippery fried egg and a crisp slice of bacon.

  ‘No use looking at mine,’ said Daddy. ‘You’ll have to get your own.’

  ‘But I can’t cook egg and bacon,’ said Jeremy James.

  ‘Awful, isn’t it?’ said Daddy. ‘Let’s hope Mummy’s strike won’t last too long.’

  ‘Couldn’t you cook it for me?’ asked Jeremy James.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Daddy, ‘I’m on strike, too.’

  Jeremy James frowned. After all, if everybody went on strike, who was going to do the work?

  ‘Well, what should I have for my breakfast?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ said Mummy.

  ‘That’s up to you,’ said Daddy. ‘You can help yourself to a glass of water, can’t you?’

  For breakfast, Jeremy James had a glass of water, and a very dry crust of bread which he found at the bottom of an otherwise empty bread bin. It wasn’t a very nice breakfast.

  After the not-very-nice breakfast, Jeremy James waited to be told to go and do his Number Two. He had been looking forward to saying, ‘No, I’m on strike’, but Mummy and Daddy did not seem in the least bit interested. Mummy was reading a magazine and Daddy was reading the paper, and hours and hours went by.

  ‘Aren’t you going to tell me to do my Number Two?’ asked Jeremy James.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Mummy. ‘We’re on strike.’

  That was certainly not the conversation Jeremy James had looked forward to. Slowly, and rather miserably, he made his way upstairs. When he had not done his Number Two, and had not washed his face and not brushed his teeth, he looked round for his clothes. His dirty clothes were still where he had left them last night, but there were no clean clothes anywhere.

  ‘Mummy,’ called Jeremy James, ‘I can’t find any clean clothes.’

  ‘I don’t suppose there are any,’ called Mummy. ‘You’ll have to wear your dirty ones.’

  ‘But they’re all muddy and horrible,’ called Jeremy James.

  ‘You’d better wash them out, then,’ called Mummy. ‘I’m on strike.’

  Jeremy James went downstairs again.

  ‘Still in your pyjamas?’ said Daddy.

  ‘You do look mis
erable,’ said Mummy. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I didn’t know you were going on strike,’ said Jeremy James. ‘I thought it was just going to be me.’

  ‘Well, you gave us an idea,’ said Mummy. ‘And it does make life easier when you don’t have to work, doesn’t it?’

  ‘When is your strike going to finish?’ asked Jeremy James.

  ‘When I get what I want,’ said Mummy.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Jeremy James.

  ‘I thought I’d ask for the same as you,’ said Mummy. ‘One hundred pounds and fourpence. We should both get the same, otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.’

  Jeremy James saw a glimmer of hope. ‘Is Daddy going to give it to you?’ he asked.

  ‘No, you have to give it to me,’ said Mummy. ‘I’m only not working for you. I’m still working for Daddy and the twins.’

  ‘But . . .’ said Jeremy James, ‘I haven’t got a hundred pounds and fourpence.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Daddy, ‘now I’ve had an idea about that. Supposing, Jeremy James, you were to end your strike, but instead of paying you your one hundred pounds and fourpence I gave it to Mummy instead, then it would be just like you paying Mummy, and so she could end her strike as well. How does that . . . um . . . strike you?’

  Jeremy James thought about it, and the more he thought about it, the better it seemed.

  ‘Will I be able to have my breakfast, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course,’ said Daddy. ‘That’s part of the agreement.’

  ‘And clean clothes?’ asked Jeremy James.

  ‘So long as you agree to the terms,’ said Daddy. Jeremy James gave a smile as wide as a rasher of bacon, and his eyes shone as brightly as a newly fried egg.

  ‘Yes, please,’ he said.

  ‘There you are,’ said Daddy, ‘all that’s needed is goodwill and good sense on both sides, and industrial relations are simple as ABC.’

  Jeremy James wasn’t quite sure what ‘industrial relations’ were, but he did know that breakfast that day tasted nicer than it had ever tasted before.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Hunt

  It was a typical English summer’s day, with the rain slanting down from a blueless grey sky, and Jeremy James was bored. Mummy was resting on the settee, the twins were asleep upstairs (the twins seemed to have a funny effect on Mummy: whenever they went to sleep, she went to sleep, too) – and Daddy was in his study, playing with his typewriter. Jeremy James sat on the living-room floor, surrounded by picture books, toy soldiers, and his train set, and he didn’t know what to do. He’d read all the picture books, he’d killed all the soldiers, and he’d called his train set out on strike. It was a hundred years till teatime, and a hundred years since lunch, and Mummy shouldn’t have curled up on the settee – she should have taken Jeremy James somewhere nice, or played a game with him, or left him a mountain of chocolate to eat through.

  ‘Ts!’ said Jeremy James nice and loud, and watched Mummy’s eyes in the hope that they might flicker open, but Mummy’s eyes remained firmly closed. ‘Hmmph!’ he said, but still there was no attention.

  ‘If I was Christopher or Jennifer,’ thought Jeremy James, ‘I could open my mouth and howl, and then Mummy would jump up and hug me and ask me what’s the matter. But if I open my Jeremy James mouth and howl, all I shall get is a telling-off.’

  Jeremy James gave a loud sigh, but still Mummy’s eyes stayed shut.

  Jeremy James would certainly have rolled over and died of boredom if, at that moment, there hadn’t been a sudden dramatic event. The room was entered by a loud buzz. And in the middle of the buzz, carrying it all over the living room, was a nasty, bad-tempered, thoroughly dangerous wasp. It zoomed over Jeremy James’s head, battered at the window like a shower of hailstones, and then came humming back across the room, right past Mummy and on to the arm of the settee. Surely Mummy would wake up now, with all that noise. But no, Mummy had heard nothing, and she couldn’t know that just a few inches away from her leg crawled a yellow and black striped monster that might attack her at any minute. Perhaps he should wake her up to warn her. But would she be pleased or not? Jeremy James could imagine her saying: ‘Oh thank you, Jeremy James, you’ve saved my life, what a good boy you are, here’s a whole bar of chocolate!’ But he could also imagine her saying ‘Ts!’ or ‘Hmmph!’ and ‘Fancy waking me up for that!’ It was a difficult decision to take, but he didn’t have to take it because abruptly the wasp took off again and made a wasp-line for the window. And there it stayed, crawling up and down the glass, no doubt pleased to be out of the pouring rain.

  Jeremy James tiptoed across the room and stood near, but not too near the window. The wasp didn’t look quite so dangerous when it wasn’t flying. In fact, it looked rather silly. It was waggling its black feelers up and down, and its little wings were as thin as tracing paper, and the yellow and black bit hardly seemed to belong to the wasp at all – it was just being dragged along behind, like Jeremy James when he went shopping with Mummy. Jeremy James decided that without its buzz, the wasp was a bit of a disappointment. He took one step nearer the window, stretched out his arm, stretched out one finger, and BUZZ! went the wasp, and whined straight past Jeremy James’s left ear, so close that he even felt the draught. Jeremy James jumped back, and his heart was going thumpety-thump. Wasps were dangerous. And this wasp was particularly dangerous, because it was the sort of wasp that made you think it was silly but then suddenly leapt out at you when you weren’t expecting it. Jeremy James reckoned a wasp like that could do a lot of damage if it was allowed to go on tricking people, and the person who managed to rid the world of such a dangerous animal would be a real hero, worthy of a hundred bars of chocolate.

  The wasp continued to whizz from one side of the room to the other. It would take a lot of catching, a wasp that could whizz like that, but on the other hand, wouldn’t Mummy and Daddy be pleased when he showed them its body! Especially when they knew what a dangerous wasp it had been. Now what could he use to kill it? Mummy usually trod on insects she wanted to kill, but you couldn’t tread on an insect that was whizzing round the room. The wasp hurtled past Jeremy James’s right ear, and Jeremy James almost fell over as he got out of the way. This wasp was really looking for trouble, and it was going to be a question of who caught whom first. Jeremy James had an idea. He couldn’t lift his leg up that high, but he could certainly lift his arm, and if he put his slipper on the end of his arm, well, the wasp wouldn’t know the difference.

  Jeremy James stood in the middle of the room, slipper in hand, and waited. Zoom came the wasp, swish went the slipper, but the wasp was already a mile away. It was not going to be easy. Jeremy James tried a few random swishes, in the hope that the wasp might accidentally bump into the slipper, but his arm soon got tired and the wasp didn’t have any accidents, so Jeremy James stopped swishing. Then Jeremy James lost sight and sound of the wasp. The room was completely silent, save for the gentle rise and fall of Mummy sleeping. Where was the enemy? Jeremy James stood quite still, eyes jerking as he scanned the ceiling, walls, floor and furniture. Had it gone? Was it hiding? Was it fast asleep somewhere? Did wasps go to sleep?

  Jeremy James didn’t like the silence. The wasp’s buzz was nasty, but its silence was nastier. For all he knew, the wasp might be sitting just a couple of inches away, watching him and planning to sting him just when he wasn’t looking. At least when it was whizzing around, you knew where it was, but if you didn’t know where it was, it could be anywhere. It could even be on Jeremy James himself! Jeremy James had a quick look down at his body and legs. Then he twisted round to look at the back of his legs. No wasp. He humped his shoulders up and down. No buzz. All the same, he didn’t feel safe. Very slowly and carefully, he padded round the room, slipper held high and eyes darting from side to side.

  The wasp was not on the window. The wasp was not on the settee. The wasp was not on Mummy. The wasp was not on either armchair. The wasp was not on the sideboard. The wasp was not . . . but it wa
s . . . it was there, on the mantelpiece. To be precise, it was on the vase of flowers on the mantelpiece, waggling its feelers and ducking its silly head. And it hadn’t seen Jeremy James. It had no idea that it had been spotted, and it had no idea that Jeremy James was now creeping up behind it, slipper raised and heart pounding. Jeremy James padded closer and closer, an inch at a time, until he could actually see the wasp’s black eyes and yellow cheeks, and its striped shopping-bag body quivering a little behind it. This was the most dangerous wasp that ever lived, and the safety of the world depended now on Jeremy James and his slipper. The great hunter paused, gathered all his strength together, and then in one swift movement brought his mighty weapon down on the back of his deadly enemy . . .

  What happened next came as a terrible shock to Jeremy James, to Mummy, and above all to the wasp. There was a shattering crash as the vase came tumbling down from the mantelpiece and smashed to bits on the hearth below. In no time there were flowers and pools of water all over the living-room carpet, and Mummy had leapt off the settee with a face as white as a snowdrop.

  ‘What was that?’ she cried. ‘What on earth was that?’

  And then she saw what on earth it was, and she saw Jeremy James standing over the bits of vase and the mess of flowers and the puddles of water, and he was holding a slipper in his hand, and he was looking up at her with eyes that were very round and rather frightened.