Never Say Moo to a Bull

by David Henry Wilson

  ‘They’re both nice,’ said Mummy.

  ‘Yes, but which is nicer?’ said Jeremy James.

  ‘Well, sometimes chocolate, and sometimes liquorice allsorts,’ said Mummy. ‘It depends what you feel like.’

  ‘Which do you usually feel like?’ asked Jeremy James.

  Mummy thought long and hard. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘in the afternoons, liquorice allsorts, and in the evenings chocolate.’

  Grown-ups can be very annoying at times. Jeremy James made one more effort: ‘What about the mornings?’

  ‘In the mornings,’ said Mummy, ‘I don’t really feel like sweets at all.’

  Jeremy James wandered over to Daddy.

  ‘Daddy,’ he said, ‘which do you prefer – chocolate or liquorice allsorts?’

  Daddy seemed quite pleased to see Jeremy James, and he stopped work at his paper chain in order to consider the question.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I prefer chocolate to those pink liquorice allsorts with black in the middle, but I prefer those black liquorice allsorts with white in the middle to chocolate. But by and large, all in all, and as a whole, I think I’d say it’s fifty-fifty.’

  Jeremy James’s face became as long as Santa Claus’s beard.

  ‘Which do you prefer?’ asked Daddy.

  Jeremy James’s face shortened again. ‘That’s easy,’ he said. ‘Both.’

  Mummy had finished the Christmas tree, and it sparkled like diamonds and emeralds.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand with those paper chains now,’ she said to Daddy.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Daddy. ‘Blooming awkward things. You can’t really do them on your own.’

  ‘No, you can’t,’ said Mummy, with rather more emphasis on ‘you’ than on ‘can’t’.

  Jeremy James put his hands in his pockets and wandered over to the living-room door. His first question had been well and truly non-answered, and there seemed little point in asking the second. ‘Wait and see,’ they’d say, or ‘You’ll know on Christmas Day.’ But at the last moment, he decided to ask it all the same.

  ‘What am I going to have for Christmas?’ he said.

  ‘Wait and see,’ said Daddy.

  ‘You’ll know on Christmas Day,’ said Mummy.

  Grown-ups are very predictable.

  Daddy went on showing Mummy how paper chains should be put up, and then Mummy started showing Daddy how paper chains could be put up. Jeremy James wandered out of the room and up the stairs. He peeped into the twins’ room, but Christopher and Jennifer were both fast asleep, and even if they hadn’t been fast asleep, they wouldn’t have been able to help him. Babies weren’t much help to anybody. All they could do was eat, sleep, cry and bring up wind. And make their nappies dirty. Babies, as far as Jeremy James was concerned, were as useless as empty wrappers, and he couldn’t see why grown-ups made such a fuss of them.

  Jeremy James went into his own room, knelt down, and pulled two packets out from under the bed. There was no doubt about it, they were very attractive packets, and it made your mouth water just to look at them. It would make your mouth water even more to look at what was inside the packets. Mummy and Daddy were in for a real treat at Christmas. You couldn’t have a nicer treat than chocolate and liquorice allsorts. Unless, of course, there was something wrong with the chocolate and the liquorice allsorts. For instance, the chocolate people might have accidentally wrapped up a block of wood by mistake, and the liquorice allsorts people might have filled the box with pebbles or marbles by mistake. These things do happen sometimes. Mummy had once found a piece of string in her soup, and Daddy was always finding little insects in his brussels sprouts, and if the soup people and the brussels sprout people can make mistakes like that, who knows what the chocolate people and the liquorice allsort people might get up to? It was definitely safer for Jeremy James to have a quick look at what was inside the packets.

  Inside the chocolate wrapper there was chocolate. Thick, dark, smooth-looking chocolate, with ridges in between the squares where you could break bits off. Jeremy James wondered if the chocolate would taste as nice as it looked. You could never tell by the way things looked. After all, when he’d had a cough a few weeks ago, Mummy had brought out a bottle with a lovely-looking red liquid in it, but the lovely-looking red liquid had tasted all ug-yuk-yucky, and he’d have spat it out if Mummy hadn’t made him swallow it. No, you could never be sure that nice-looking things tasted nice. The only way to be sure was to try them for yourself. And you could always fold the silver paper over afterwards, to hide the bit that was missing . . . And no one would notice if there were two or three liquorice allsorts missing from the box, because all the other liquorice allsorts would roll together and fill the gap . . . The chocolate and the liquorice allsorts did taste nice – in fact, they tasted delicious. All of them.

  That night, which was just a week before Christmas, Jeremy James had a very bad tummy ache. Nobody else in the family had a tummy ache but, as Daddy said, it could just have been the excitement. Fortunately he was quite all right again after a couple of days, but every so often Mummy and Daddy noticed a slightly worried look on Jeremy James’s face – especially when the talk came round to the subject of Christmas presents. But by Christmas Eve the worried frown had completely disappeared, and Jeremy James simply could not stop talking about Christmas presents. He couldn’t wait to get his presents, and he couldn’t wait to give his presents, and he wished time wouldn’t pass so slowly, and he wouldn’t sleep tonight, but he’d wait up for Santa Claus, and he wished he knew what Santa Claus was going to bring him, and would Mummy and Daddy like to know what Jeremy James had got them? He could tell them now if they liked. And he wouldn’t mind if they told him what they were going to give him. He wouldn’t mind giving and getting his presents straight away. No? Tomorrow? Oooooh, all right, then. But supposing tomorrow didn’t come?

  Tomorrow came, and it was the best Christmas there had ever been. Santa Claus had left a whole lot of apples and oranges and picture books and toys and sweets in Jeremy James’s empty pillowcase, and he’d left more toys and nice clothes for the twins, and when Jeremy James went down to the living room – which was like fairyland with that sparkling tree and all those firmly fastened paper chains – he found an enormous parcel at the foot of the tree. Inside, there was the shiniest new tricycle with a bell and a saddlebag. But the most unusual presents were the presents Jeremy James gave Mummy and Daddy. For Mummy there was a beautiful box with a pretty little robin on its lid. And inside the box were lots of pebbles, which Jeremy James had very carefully picked up at the bottom of the garden. And for Daddy there was a beautiful packet with a smiling Santa Claus on top and silver paper underneath, and inside the packet was a lovely block of wood (found in Daddy’s tool shed) with a picture of Daddy on it, drawn by Jeremy James himself. And although Mummy did make a little sound rather like ‘Hmmph’ when she first saw the box and Daddy’s packet, she and Daddy smiled at each other, gave Jeremy James a big thank-you kiss, and agreed that, without a doubt, their presents had been well worth waiting for.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Christmas Spirit

  ‘The trouble with Christmas,’ said Jeremy James, ‘is the time after.’

  ‘The time after what?’ asked Mummy, undressing the Christmas tree.

  ‘After Christmas,’ said Jeremy James.

  ‘I thought it was the time between,’ said Daddy, struggling to unravel himself from a paper chain which seemed reluctant to be taken down.

  ‘No, the time in between’s all right really,’ said Jeremy James, ‘because you can look forward to getting your presents then. Only with the time after, you can’t look forward any more.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Daddy, ‘unless you look forward to next Christmas.’

  ‘That’s too long,’ said Jeremy James.

  ‘Like this blooming paper chain,’ said Daddy. ‘More like a boa-constrictor than a paper chain.’

  ‘I think we should have Christmas every day,’ sai
d Jeremy James, ‘so that we can enjoy ourselves all the time.’

  ‘If it was Christmas every day,’ said Mummy, ‘there’d never be any work done.’

  It was a typical grown-up remark. They seemed to think work was all that mattered, and playing and enjoying yourself were not important. Life was all meat, potatoes and cabbage to them, with a tiny dollop of ice cream if there was time. They didn’t seem to realize that they were much happier playing games and giving one another presents, and Jeremy James was much happier too, and all they had to do was pretend every day was Christmas and they could live happily ever after. What was the point of working if it stopped you from enjoying yourself?

  ‘Why do you have to do work?’ asked Jeremy James.

  ‘Good question,’ said Daddy. ‘I sometimes ask myself the same thing.’

  ‘Because if Daddy didn’t work,’ said Mummy, ‘there’d be no money to pay for our house and our food and our clothes and everything else. And if I didn’t work, you’d have nothing to eat and nothing to wear. You didn’t like it when we went on strike, did you? And that’s how it would be all the time.’

  ‘Well, maybe you should just work every one day, and then have Christmas every next day,’ said Jeremy James. ‘That would be fair.’

  Daddy agreed, and Mummy said perhaps they’d do that when their ship came home, and Jeremy James said he didn’t know they had a ship, and Mummy said that was just another way of saying when they were very rich, and Daddy said it was another way of saying pigs would fly.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Daddy, ‘I agree with Jeremy James. If we celebrated Christmas all the year round, people would be happier, the world would be brighter, and I wouldn’t have to keep fighting these blooming paper chains.’

  There was no doubt that Christmas was well and truly over. The turkey, Christmas pudding and mince pies were all finished, the decorations were coming down, the cards and parcels had stopped arriving, and even the crisp white snow had given way to dirty grey slush. It was as if the whole world had decided to be miserable. It made Jeremy James feel quite depressed, until he was suddenly struck by an interesting idea:

  ‘Will the shops be open again now?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mummy.

  ‘Aha!’ said Jeremy James. The interesting idea looked even more interesting. ‘I’ve got some money upstairs,’ said Jeremy James. ‘Left over from Christmas.’

  ‘Have you?’ said Mummy.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jeremy James.

  There was a moment’s silence. Mummy didn’t seem to have realized that Jeremy James had had an interesting idea.

  ‘If the shops are open,’ said Jeremy James, ‘I could go and spend some of my money, couldn’t I?’

  ‘I haven’t got time to go shopping now, dear,’ said Mummy, who had finished taking decorations off the Christmas tree and was now taking decorations off Daddy.

  ‘Well, can I just go to the sweetshop round the corner, then?’ asked Jeremy James.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Mummy. ‘Only you’d better not spend more than 50p.’

  That made the interesting idea a little less interesting than it had been, but still, you could buy a lot of nice sweets with 50p – 50p’s worth, in fact.

  ‘Can I go on my new tricycle?’ asked Jeremy James.

  ‘As long as you don’t go in the road,’ said Mummy.

  ‘It’s pavement all the way,’ said Daddy. ‘But don’t go knocking down old ladies or garden walls, and don’t break the speed limit.’

  The interesting idea became an interesting reality. Jeremy James, muffled up in scarf and overcoat, slipped a few shining coins into his shining leather saddlebag, tinkled loudly on his shining silver bell, and set out through the splashy, squelchy, slithery slush to break the world tricycle record between home and the sweetshop. There was nobody on the pavement at all, and with a loud brrm Jeremy James gathered speed, his legs whirling round like pink Catherine wheels. As he neared the corner, he slowed down a little, swung the handlebars round, let out a loud ‘Errgh’ worthy of any world champion driver, and raced headlong into a great mass of brown stuff that was all soft and crumply and made a noise very similar to Jeremy James’s ‘Errgh’ only louder and deeper. When the soft crumply mass of brown stuff had picked itself up off the pavement, it turned out to be a man in a brown overcoat. The man in the brown overcoat wasn’t too pleased at his first meeting with Jeremy James, and as he brushed the wet slush off himself, he looked rather fiercely at the tricycle and its rider, and said:

  ‘You wanner look where you’re goin’ with that thing. I could ’ave been killed.’

  ‘I’m ever so sorry,’ said Jeremy James. ‘I didn’t see you.’

  ‘Not many people can see round corners,’ said the man in the brown overcoat. ‘That’s why you should go slow round corners. So you don’t bump into people.’

  The man in the brown overcoat was fairly old, and his coat was very old, because it was all torn and thready. When he’d stopped looking fiercely at Jeremy James, his face became kinder, though it was covered in spiky bristles and didn’t seem very clean.

  ‘Got that for Christmas, did you?’ he said, nodding towards the tricycle.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jeremy James. ‘And it’s got a bell and a saddlebag.’

  ‘So I see,’ said the man. ‘An’ it’s a nice solid job an’ all, ’cause I felt ’ow solid it is. When a solid job like that bumps into somebody, the somebody can feel ’ow solid it is.’

  The man in the brown overcoat sat down on a garden wall, and pulled a half-eaten apple out of his pocket. Jeremy James noticed that the man was wearing grey gloves which his fingers poked out of, and on the man’s feet were some black shoes that his toes poked out of.

  ‘Aren’t your fingers and toes cold?’ he asked the man.

  ‘Don’t know,’ said the man. ‘Can’t feel ’em.’

  ‘Well you should have asked Santa Claus to give you shoes and gloves for Christmas,’ said Jeremy James. ‘Only you’re too late now.’

  ‘Santa Claus never brings me nothin’ anyway,’ said the man. ‘ ’E don’t ’ave time for people like me.’

  ‘Do you mean you didn’t get any Christmas presents?’ said Jeremy James. ‘Not even from your Mummy and Daddy?’

  ‘That would ’ave bin a surprise,’ said the man. ‘They’ve bin dead twenty years. No, sonny, nobody gives presents to ole blokes like me. People either walk straight past you, or they knock you down.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to knock you down,’ said Jeremy James. ‘And I did say sorry.’

  ‘I know that, son,’ said the man. ‘An’ you stopped to talk to me, didn’t you?’

  The man munched on his apple. He really was a very dirty man – his hair, his face, his clothes and even his fingernails were dirty.

  ‘Why are you so dirty?’ asked Jeremy James.

  ‘Protection,’ said the man. ‘Dirt protects you against the cold, you see. Now if Santa Claus was to give me a nice warm house an’ nice clean clothes, an’ a nice warm Christmas dinner, I wouldn’t need all this dirt.’

  ‘I don’t think Santa Claus gives that sort of present,’ said Jeremy James. ‘I think you have to do work to get that.’

  ‘I expect you’re right,’ said the man. ‘And that’s why I’m so dirty.’

  All the same, Jeremy James thought it a bit unfair that the man in the brown overcoat should have had no Christmas present at all, and a plan began to form in his mind. It was a plan that needed to be thought about a little, because after all 50p was 50p, but the thinking didn’t last very long.

  ‘Can you wait here for a minute?’ asked Jeremy James.

  ‘Well, I expect so,’ said the man. ‘I don’t ’ave any urgent appointments for today.’

  ‘Brrm brrm!’ said Jeremy James, and pedalled at world record speed away from the man in the brown overcoat. ‘I’ll be back in a minute!’ he called as he pedalled.

  And back in a minute he was. With a loud ‘Errgh!’ he screeched to a halt right b
eside the man in the brown overcoat. Then Jeremy James got off his tricycle, and went to his saddlebag.

  ‘Now close your eyes and hold out your hand,’ he said to the man in the brown overcoat.

  The man did as he was told, and when he opened his eyes again, he found that his hand was holding a completely full packet of liquorice allsorts.

  ‘It’s a Christmas present,’ said Jeremy James.

  The man in the brown overcoat looked at the packet of liquorice allsorts, then he looked at Jeremy James. Then he looked at the packet again, and then again at Jeremy James.

  ‘What’s your name, son?’ he said at last.

  ‘Jeremy James,’ said Jeremy James.

  ‘Well, Jeremy James,’ said the man, ‘it’s the best Christmas present I’ve ever ’ad. An’ if Jesus ’isself was to give me a present, it couldn’t be better’n this one. I’ll remember you, Jeremy James.’

  Then the man in the brown overcoat stood up, and patted Jeremy James gently on the head with a half-gloved hand.

  ‘I must be on me way now. But I’ll always remember you, Jeremy James.’

  ‘Merry Christmas, then,’ said Jeremy James.

  ‘Merry Christmas to you, too,’ said the man.

  And the man walked slowly away in one direction, while Jeremy James brrm-brrmed at top speed in the other. There was, thought Jeremy James to himself, a great deal to be said for having Christmas every day.

  About the Author

  David Henry Wilson was born in London in 1937 and educated at Dulwich College, and Pembroke College, Cambridge. Before retirement, he lectured at the universities of Bristol, and Konstanz, Germany, where he founded the University Theatre. His plays have been widely performed in the UK, America and Europe, and his children’s books – especially the Jeremy James series – have been translated into many languages. His adult novel The Coachman Rat won critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic.

  He is widowed, has three grown-up children, is a doting grandfather and lives a quiet life in Taunton, Somerset, translating other people’s books, helping to run his local cricket club and eating chocolate.