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My house is ‘No. 4.’ I prefer ‘No. 4.’ to ‘Number Four’ although I am told that ‘Number Four’ looks more like a writer. I don’t agree. I prefer using numbers to words to get my point across. Outside No. 4. is a red phone box. This one.
On a faraway day from here (it was rainy I hear) my dad telephoned the midwife to say I was ready. She arrived with her two corgi dogs April and May and helped June (my mother) push me out of her womb into the front bedroom.
As I arrive, I slip through a space-time wormhole. I zoom past Mother’s breast, terry nappies, Farley’s rusks, whooping cough, jars of lamb and carrot, rides on the back of my mother’s lady bicycle in a seat that rasps my thigh red, and all that inconsequent crying, pukka as a four-year-old sporting a metaphorical tie that will grow bigger and bigger sizes and remain around my neck until a trip to Italy one August many years later persuades me as a result of the inordinate heat to take it off.
I emerge from the wormhole with my own Corgi dog called March and I am called Tuffin.
*
Tuffin thought a lot about thinking. Thinking was how he spent all the time left over after doing. He liked best to think about doing. So that way he didn’t waste his thinking time.
*
The wormhole stays open and overflows into the back garden of No. 4.
Dad is angry as it leaves a wet stain down the wall and a permanent puddle that might undo the foundations of the house. So he says! I believe this to be a moan, not a proper problem. Moans are common in comfortable families. They substitute for proper problems when there aren’t enough of those to go round.
Dogs are my favourite thing and I love them and think about them a lot. Dogs are great – Corgis are the greatest – Corgi cars make me think of driving one day and that makes me feel as big as a giant.
March my Corgi dog presents a problem not a moan. He is in a permanent state of emergency as if he had a siren and blue lights. In one of his emergencies he killed a Pekingese dog that belonged to No. 15. Nobody in the street liked the Peke except No. 15 of course. They must have as they had two the same (everyone here seems to like to keep pairs of dogs – perhaps it’s about symmetry or an offer or good luck). They make a sound like a pig not a dog. Dogs should sound like dogs in the same way as people should talk not bark. Anyway, even though March only killed one of them No. 15 complained to the police and so March went on holiday to a kennel. He never came back so I guess he must have liked it. I expected another dog to come through the wormhole but the wormhole never does things if you expect them. I find you need a real thing to stay interested; just imagining doesn’t work. So without a real dog
I have decided I like stones better. After all there are lots of those.
When I grow up I will drive a car or be a giant.
*
March is a month and a dog. The two are inseparable like June and mother.
Both are dead
but March the month comes back every year. March the dog doesn’t and nor does June the mother.
*
My stones are kept in my room under the bed. It’s the room I was born in, the one with the wormhole. Nobody knows they are there except me and Jill. Jill lives next door and has a guinea pig and her dad has a gun that he uses to shoot rats that bother the guinea pig even though the guinea pig is really just a fat rat. Perhaps that why the rats bother the guinea pig, to bully her for being fat. They also have a pond so that’s where we get the stones. Someone has pretended the pond is a beach by putting stones like the ones at the seaside all around it. We take them when nobody is looking, specially her dad. We don’t want to get shot like the rats. We take them up to my bedroom, crawl under the bed and pretend we are in the bank counting the stones, saving them for later, writing a list of them in order of specialness. The best ones are smooth and flat just like coins. Jill says her brother knows how to skim coins like that so that they skip across the water seven times. I have tried to do that with my dad. He is quite good but so far I have only managed one skip.
When I grow up I will go to the seaside and skim coins and be rich. I will marry Jill and sleep with her so we can share our dreams and talk about them the next day. She is on the top of my list of people.
*
Dad gives me his old pipe. Jill and I move to a hole we dig next to the compost.
We cover the top of the hole with an old table and some sacks. Inside it’s dark and cosy. We make a carpet of grass cuttings on the floor and dig a second small sideways hole as a cupboard where we keep Dad’s pipe.
“Our hole is our home now,” I say. I take the pipe and place it between my teeth and blow. “See,” I say. The pipe doesn’t smoke but it hisses. Jill laughs and presses another layer of grass clippings onto the floor.
“It’s really soft,” she says. “Feel.”
I push my fingers into the grass and blow on the pipe. “The hole smells of Dad.”
We laugh and push each other and make rude dad noises and smells. Then Jill makes cups of tea and keeps things tidy while I smoke my pipe and keep guard. We try lying down. The
hole is just wide enough that we can lie head to toe, our faces pressed into the wall of mud on either side. As we do so the rain falls. We pretend to sleep until the hole begins to get wet.
We don’t dream. Then Jill has to go home to have tea and Mum gives me a bath. When I get out of the bath I leave a lot of wet grass and mud behind. “Look, the hole has come inside,” I say to Mum.
When I grow up I will dig a hole to Australia.
*
Now I have three holes and lots and lots of stones. My three holes are:
1. The wormhole in my room that means I don’t ever have to be a child.
2. The hole next to the compost where I can smoke my pipe like Dad and sleep with Jill
3. The bath that is really another compost hole but indoors.
You know about my stones.
This is enough things for me to go to the library to find out.
The library is a lorry. At first this confused me as the normal lorries carried bread and coal not books. This one has a door in the side and steps and a rubber stamp and a librarian called Linda that my mum knows from Bexley where my Nan is in hospital for trying to cook her head in the oven. Linda doesn’t mention this but she does say that the book my mum wants is in so my mum is pleased and doesn’t have to pay. I ask for books on wormholes and stones but Linda suggests Bom the Little Drummer so I take that instead. It’s a good book because Bom’s drum rolls down the hill and that gives me an idea for an invention so instead of holes and stones I ask if l can have a book on inventions. Linda says she will bring one in a fortnight when I return Bom. That’s the trouble with libraries: you have to give the books back. The best thing about a book is keeping it. That’s more important than reading it. I keep my books on my shelves in order of how many times they have been opened. The unopened ones are the best but I only have one: The Observer’s Book of Freshwater Fish. Auntie Margaret got it for me so I could look up ‘minnow’ but after she gave it me she also tried to cook her head in the oven so Dad said best to leave it shut.
When I grow up I will be an inventor and invent something round like a stone or a hole or a wheel – something that goes somewhere.
*
My favourite thing of all is jumble sales. The Scouts one is the biggest because they come round to collect.
At the Scouts’ jumble sale I buy a ‘perambulator’. I want to buy a sun lamp to make you well or brown but Dad says it’s too dangerous. Dad is at his best at jumble sales as everything is very cheap and because I am small people sell me things even cheaper which means he gets some drills for only sixpence. The pram is old but it has four wheels and a brake and lots of promise. The people at the jumble sale are nice but some of them are Gypsies so I always take my penknife. At home I take off all the bed and baby parts and leave just the boy parts. Dad lets me have an old shelf to make a seat. The invention is perfect for the wormhole because it always goes fast and straight. When I finish it I polish the rust off the chrome with silver polish and my fingers turn black. I use the whole tin up.
When I grow up I will have more silver polish and a car I can steer.
*
Now that I only make inventions I only have time for one hole so I shut the wormhole fill in the compost hole and that just leaves the bath. I think Dad would be cross if I did something with that as the bathroom would be empty and we would all be dirty.
Jill is still nice so I didn’t need to take her off my list of people, but Andrew is new so he has moved to the top.
My bike has two crossbars but they are thin. This isn’t a mistake, it’s modern. It troubles me a bit because I expected one crossbar but as the bike cost Dad £16 and Andrew’s (which has only one crossbar) cost his dad £14 it’s higher on the list. His has white tyres; mine are black with white round the edge. We scramble with them so they get messy and end up the same colour. Jill can’t play because her bike doesn’t have a crossbar at all. She weed in the middle of the road when I told her. I looked but Andrew didn’t. She laughed at him but it wasn’t funny. I think I like Jill best but there is a problem with her bike.
When I grow up I will do without a bathroom as it just causes trouble.
*
I have invented a crossbar for Jill. I found a stick in the wood near the station and cut it to the right length with my hacksaw. This is not the right saw but it’s the only one I am allowed. I want to use the electric one Grandad made from an old washing machine but someone had left a bag of old taps and pipes on it and I can’t lift it off. I sellotaped the stick onto Jill’s bike and she is really pleased and promised not to wee in the road anymore. Andrew is pleased about that. Jill scrambles with us now all the time. She is quite fast because of the crossbar.
When she wins Andrew sings a song about the crossbar. “Crossbar star, I love you,” it goes. I can’t remember the rest but it’s good. I think Andrew might prefer Jill’s bike to his. He needs a hacksaw.
When I grow up I will use the electric saw and give Andrew my hacksaw.
