For
Chris,
Jenny,
and (of course)
J.J.
Contents
1 The Elephant on Daddy’s Car
2 Shopping
3 The Football Match
4 Feeding the Elephant
5 Buried Treasure
6 The Doctor
7 Timothy
8 The Bathroom Lock
9 The Babysitter
10 A Death in the Family
11 A Birth in the Family
CHAPTER ONE
The Elephant on Daddy’s Car
‘Mummy,’ said Jeremy James, ‘there’s an elephant sitting on Daddy’s car.’
‘Yes, dear,’ said Mummy, eyes fixed on hands fixed on dough fixed on table.
‘Mummy, why is the elephant sitting on Daddy’s car?’
‘I expect it’s tired, dear. It’ll probably get up and go away soon.’
‘Well, it hasn’t,’ said Jeremy James two minutes later. ‘It hasn’t got up. The car’s gone down, but the elephant hasn’t got up. Mummy, do you think I ought to tell Daddy?’
‘No, no, leave your father,’ said Mummy, ‘you know he hates being interrupted when he’s working.’
‘Daddy’s watching a football match on television.’
‘If Daddy says he’s working, he’s working.’
‘Well, there’s an elephant sitting on his car,’ said Jeremy James.
Mummy thumbed sultanas into the dough to make eyes and noses.
‘And the car doesn’t look very happy about it,’ said Jeremy James.
‘Jeremy James,’ said Mummy. ‘Elephants don’t sit on cars.’
‘Well this one does.’
‘Elephants don’t sit on cars. If Mummy says elephants don’t sit on cars, dear, then elephants don’t sit on cars.’
‘But—’
‘They don’t. Finish! Now play with your train set.’
Jeremy James sat on the carpet, and played with his train set, and thought about the elephant on Daddy’s car, and thought about how stubborn Mummies can be when they want to be, and how if he was a Mummy and his son said there was an elephant on Daddy’s car, he would say ‘What a clever boy,’ and ‘Thank you for telling me,’ and ‘Here’s some money for an ice cream.’ Instead of just ‘Elephants don’t sit on cars.’
‘Goal!’ said the television set in the sitting room.
‘Goal!’ said Daddy, hard at work.
And the elephant was still sitting on Daddy’s car.
‘Mummy,’ said Jeremy James, for the latest development couldn’t be ignored. ‘Mummy, the elephant has just done its Number Two all over Daddy’s car.’
But Mummy’s face merely twitched like a fly-flicking elephant’s ear, and she said nothing.
‘Gosh, and what a Number Two! Mummy, you should see the elephant’s Number Two! Mummy, why do elephants do such big Number Twos? I can’t do a Number Two like that! Mine isn’t even a thousandth as big as that! What a Number Two!’
‘Jeremy James, if you go on talking like that, I shall send you straight to bed. Now play with your train set and let’s have no more elephant talk, and certainly no more about Number Twos. Do you hear?’
‘Yes, Mummy.’
No Number Twos. Anyone would think that Number Twos were unhealthy. Only look what happened when you didn’t do a Number Two. Then it was: ‘Jeremy James, have you done your Number Two? You haven’t done your Number Two? Then sit there until you have.’ Now tell them an elephant’s done his Number Two on Daddy’s car, and suddenly it’s rude. Why can’t grown-ups make up their minds?
Jeremy James played with his train set.
Jeremy James looked out of the window. The elephant was gone.
‘Mummy,’ said Jeremy James.
‘What is it now?’ said Mummy, half in and half out of the oven.
‘The elephant’s gone.’
‘Hmmph.’
That was a typical grown-up word: ‘Hmmph.’ It was for grown-ups only, and meant whatever they wanted it to mean. Jeremy James had tried to use a ‘Hmmph’ once himself. Mummy had said, ‘Have you done your Number Two?’ (at one of those times when Number Two wasn’t rude) and he’d replied ‘Hmmph’, because that was how grown-ups got out of awkward questions like, ‘Will you buy me something nice today,’ or, ‘Why can’t I have a toy racing car like Timothy’s?’ Only Jeremy James obviously didn’t know how to use it, because Mummy told him to speak properly, even though he’d said ‘Hmmph’ perfectly properly.
Daddy came out of the sitting room, with his face as long as an elephant’s nose.
‘They lost,’ said Daddy. ‘Right at the end. An own goal.’
Then Daddy leaned on the kitchen door-post as he always did when he’d been working (and sometimes when he was working), and watched Mummy working, presumably to make sure she was doing everything right. Jeremy James had tried leaning on the doorpost once and saying, as Daddy always ended up by saying, ‘Will it be long, dear?’ But instead of getting Mummy’s normal ‘Hmmph’, he’d had a ‘Now don’t you start!’ and been sent off to play with his train set, which he was sick of anyway.
‘Will it be long, dear?’ said Daddy.
‘Hmmph,’ said Mummy.
‘Now don’t you start,’ said Jeremy James quietly.
‘An own goal,’ said Daddy. ‘Right at the end.’
‘Was that goal Number Two?’ asked Jeremy James.
‘I don’t know what’s got into that child,’ said Mummy. Daddy elbowed himself upright off the doorpost, took one hand out of one pocket (‘Take your hands out of your pockets, Jeremy James!’) yawned, and announced, ‘Maybe I’ll go and clean the car.’
Mummy didn’t say, ‘There won’t be time before tea,’ though Daddy waited quite a while for her to say it, and so Daddy eventually left the kitchen, crossed the dining room, entered the hall, opened the front door, and went out of the house.
Jeremy James stood at the window and wondered what new words Daddy would use.
Daddy didn’t use any words. Daddy’s mouth fell open, and then Daddy came back to the house, opened the front door, entered the hall, crossed the dining room, and held himself up by the kitchen doorpost.
‘The car!’ said Daddy. Then his mouth opened and shut several times as if he’d just been pulled out of the water. ‘The car!’ he said again.
‘What’s the matter with it?’ asked Mummy, spreading hand-cream over the bread.
‘It’s been ruined. It . . . it . . . it’s ruined! It looks as if it’s been completely squashed! Completely and utterly squashed!’
‘Oh John,’ said Mummy, who only called Daddy John when she was very upset or when she wanted some money, ‘Oh John, there . . . there isn’t . . . um . . . sort of . . . dung all over it as well, is there?’
‘Yes,’ said Daddy, ‘there jolly well is! I’ve never seen anything like it, either. Must have been a herd of cows dancing on the thing!’
‘It wasn’t a herd of cows,’ said Jeremy James, ‘it was an elephant. And I saw it. And I told Mummy, but she wouldn’t listen.’
‘An elephant!’ said Daddy. ‘You saw an elephant on the car?’
‘Yes,’ said Jeremy James, ‘and I saw it do its Number Two as well.’
‘Then why on earth didn’t one of you tell me?’
‘Hmmph!’ said Mummy, and Jeremy James played with his train set.
CHAPTER TWO
Shopping
‘I’m going shopping,’ said Mummy. ‘Do you want to come with me?’
‘Will you buy me something nice?’ asked Jeremy James.
‘You can’t expect me to buy you something nice every time I go shopping,’ said Mummy. ‘I don’
t go shopping just to buy you something nice, and in any case it’s the end of the month, so I can’t afford it.’
‘Are you going to buy cornflakes?’ asked Jeremy James.
‘Yes,’ said Mummy.
‘Well I’d sooner go without my cornflakes, and have something nice instead,’ said Jeremy James.
‘Hmmph,’ said Mummy. ‘Get your coat on.’
‘I’m quite warm, though, Mummy.’
‘Get your coat on.’
That, thought Jeremy James, is typical. Just because she’s cold, I have to put a coat on.
Jeremy James and Mummy went to the shops. They walked. Jeremy James would much rather have gone by bus, but Mummy said they would come back by bus when they had the shopping to carry. It was healthier to walk. It was also cheaper to walk. So Jeremy James pretended he was a bus, and steered in and out of people till he almost steered straight into an old lady, and then Mummy told him to walk properly, so he became a guardsman instead.
The trouble with Mummy when she went shopping was that she liked all the wrong shops. Boring clothes shops and china shops and food shops especially. She only bought things in the food shops, but she spent hours in the clothes shops touching things, and hours outside the china shops gazing in as if it were the zoo. Even in the food shops she spent hours touching and gazing. She fingered every packet of cheese, opened every box of eggs, weighed every piece of meat. The only thing she didn’t spend hours on was tins of fruit, and tins of fruit were the one thing Jeremy James did like looking at. Apart from boxes of sweets and bars of chocolate and packets of cake. And Mummy didn’t spend any time on them either. Mummy didn’t really seem to have much idea about shopping.
Next to the food supermarket was a toy shop. Its windows were full of games and soldiers and tanks and footballers and bows and arrows, and a few silly things for girls. Jeremy James noted all this as they walked past the toy shop, and he pointed it out to Mummy. He said, ‘Oh look, Mummy, look at all the games and soldiers and tanks and footballers and bows and arrows, and those silly things for girls.’ Mummy said, ‘Hmmph,’ and wouldn’t stop because they would be late for dinner, or something. Jeremy James followed her with his feet, leaving his eyes behind, and bumped into a woman with a fur coat and a poodle. The woman with the fur coat and the poodle said something a bit like ‘Hmmph!’ but with rather more ‘ph’ than ‘hmm’, and Jeremy James said ‘Ouch’ and ran after Mummy, while the woman looked angry and moved her lips as if she was talking.
Mummy started picking up chickens. They were frozen chickens in paper wrappings, and they all looked alike, but Mummy studied them very carefully, one after another. Jeremy James fixed his eye on one particular chicken Mummy had just put down, and there was no doubt whatsoever that she picked the same one up again a minute later.
‘You’ve seen that one already,’ said Jeremy James. ‘I know, ’cos I’ve been watching it.’
Mummy didn’t seem to hear.
‘Mummy, won’t we be late for dinner, or something?’ said Jeremy James.
But examining chickens seemed really to make Mummy rather hard of hearing. Jeremy James wandered off to the tinned fruit department. He looked up at the coloured walls of mouth-watering pictures: pineapples, pears, peaches, cherries, raspberries, strawberries, and mandarin oranges – sweet mandarin oranges – all in their own juice which was deliciously cold after you’d put the tin in the fridge for a while. The only trouble with tinned fruit was that you always wanted a second helping, and Mummy always said ‘No’ because there was nothing left. They should make the tins a bit bigger so you could have a second helping. When he was grown up, of course, Jeremy James would buy two tins, just to make sure, but he’d suggested that to Mummy and she’d said something about tinned fruit not growing on trees, and that apparently meant no.
In front of the wall of juicy pictures were big wire thingamabobs all full of tins just like the tins up against the wall. People took tins from the thingamabobs and put them in their trolleys, leaving the others standing intact. This seemed odd to Jeremy James, because although the tins were all the same, the tins up against the wall looked nicer. They were sort of regular and more juicy-looking. Grown-ups probably don’t notice these things, because when they’re taking tins of fruit they’re in a hurry and simply go for the nearest one, which is always in the wire thingamabob. The same with cakes and bars of chocolate – they just take whatever’s nearest because they’re not interested in interesting things. They only pick and choose when it’s boring things like meat or cheese or chickens.
The more Jeremy James studied the wall of tins, the more obvious it became that those were the best tins. That was why the people who owned the shop put them further away – they were probably saving them for themselves when the shop closed. After all, when Mummy bought fresh pears, peaches, oranges, apples and so on, some were always nicer than others, and she always insisted they should eat the nasty ones first. That must be the way grown-ups did things. Nasties first. It was the same with dinner and dessert. She never let him have dessert till he’d finished dinner. And he had to have his bath before he could have his bed-time story. And he had to tidy his room before he got his piece of chocolate. Nasties first, that was the rule. And so the best tins of fruit were those against the wall, and the best tin of all must be the one most difficult to get at – the last tin that anybody could reach. It must be that tin there (he was in front of the mandarin orange department) – the tin in the middle of the bottom row.
Jeremy James imagined saying to Mummy, ‘Mummy, this is the best tin of mandarin oranges in the whole shop.’ And Mummy would say he was a clever boy, and she might buy him an ice cream even though it was the end of the month. In fact she might make it his regular job – choosing the best tin of fruit every time they went shopping. Jeremy James smiled to himself. Life is simple when you use your brain. Jeremy James looked round quickly to make sure the shop people weren’t looking, because you could be quite certain they would try to stop him taking the best tin of mandarin oranges in the whole shop. No one was looking. Jeremy James eased past the wire thingamabob. Jeremy James bent down. Jeremy James put his hand round the best tin of mandarin oranges in the whole shop. Jeremy James pulled. The best tin of mandarin oranges didn’t move. Of course it didn’t move – there were two more tins resting on it holding it down. And so with his left hand Jeremy James pushed the two holding-down tins, and with his right hand he pulled out the best tin of mandarin oranges.
And then a strange and terrible thing happened. The wall of tins seemed to do a kind of knees-bend. And then the tins started falling down. First of all they fell from round the best tin which wasn’t there any more, and then they fell all over the place. Some of them fell on Jeremy James, but he quickly jumped out of the way, and stood behind the wire thingamabob, watching. Tins were bouncing and rolling everywhere, and it wasn’t just mandarin oranges – peaches, pears and pineapples joined in as well. And the people in the shop all stopped moving around and turned to look in the direction of the tins of fruit, and two or three shop people came hurrying along with pale faces and frowning eyebrows, and an old lady pointed at her foot and limped away muttering, and a baby cried, and more tins fell and rolled, and a very big shop man in a grey suit started giving orders and making the other people in the shop run around, and there were veins standing out in his forehead, and his eyes were bulgy, and he didn’t look like a very nice man, and his bulgy eyes settled on Jeremy James, and Jeremy James decided he’d better go back to Mummy. He was rather glad, when he turned round, that Mummy was already there.
‘Come on, Jeremy James,’ said Mummy. ‘We’ll be late for dinner.’ Or something. Mummy took the best tin of mandarin oranges in the whole shop out of Jeremy James’s hand, and slipped it into her trolley, and pulled Jeremy James along – rather roughly, he thought – to the cash desk.
As they left the shop, Jeremy James looked back. The shop people were still picking up tins, and the man in the grey suit still didn’t
look very nice. But Jeremy James knew why the man in the grey suit was angry. He’d wanted that tin of mandarin oranges for himself, that was why.
CHAPTER THREE
The Football Match
Every so often Daddy stopped working. That is to say, every so often Daddy admitted he had stopped working. Of course, he wasn’t working when he was in bed, in the bath, in the kitchen, in the armchair, leaning on the doorpost, or watching television, but otherwise generally he was working. His study door was firmly closed, and from the study would come that profound stillness and silence of the man at work. You could sometimes hear a typewriter, too, but Daddy always said it was the bits in between the typewriter that were the real work, and the quieter he was, the harder he was working. That was what Daddy said.
But every so often, Daddy stopped working. And on Saturday afternoons he almost never worked. And on this particular Saturday afternoon, as on every other Saturday afternoon, he announced after lunch that he was going to take the afternoon off. There was, he had been led to believe, a football match on this afternoon, and as he felt in need of some fresh air, he might pop along to see it.
‘Why don’t you take Jeremy James?’ said Mummy.
Daddy thought hard for a minute or two, wondering why he couldn’t take Jeremy James, but it soon became clear from his silence that he couldn’t find any particular reason. And so Jeremy James was wrapped up in his thickest sweater and his heaviest coat and his ear-warmingest ear-warmers, and went off hand-in-hand with Daddy, blowing clouds of dragon-breath over the winter landscape.
They didn’t take the car because, said Daddy, it would be quicker to walk. Lots of cars went past them, soon leaving them far behind, but when Jeremy James pointed out that the cars were quicker than they were, Daddy simply murmured, ‘You’ll see,’ so Jeremy James and he went on walking. When they got near the football stadium, the pavement began to get more and more crowded, and very soon they were walking in the road, and Daddy was quite right, because they then started passing cars which hooted angrily. Jeremy James wanted to let go of Daddy’s hand so that he could be a racing car zooming in and out of the leg-jungle, but Daddy made him hold tight; otherwise, as Daddy said, ‘They’ll turn you into a half-time message.’
Elephants Don't Sit on Cars Page 1
