Outside the ground itself, there were queues which were certainly the biggest queues in the world. The queues in Mummy’s food shops weren’t even queues compared with these queues. These were monster queues, with hundreds of thousands of people – most of them men, which made them even more different from the food-shop queues. A lot of the men looked very happy, and had bright scarves (mainly blue and white) round their necks, with big flowers (also blue and white) stuck in their coats. One or two men had rattles (also blue and white) which were a lot bigger than Jeremy James’s old baby rattles that he had grown out of long ago. These rattles were so big you could never grow out of them, and they made a much louder noise than a thousand of Jeremy James’s old baby rattles.
The queues moved a lot quicker than the food-shop queues, and each time someone went into the football ground, there was a clickety-click, which turned out to be an iron bar you had to push through. When Jeremy James pushed through, it went clickety-click, just as it had done for the man in front of him, but really when you thought about it, there didn’t seem much point, because you could have got into the ground much easier without the iron bar.
‘I think we’ll go in the stand,’ said Daddy, ‘it’ll be more comfortable.’ And so they joined another queue, which was much smaller than the first queue, and soon they were climbing up some steep steps, at the top of which was a man with a moustache and a red face who took Daddy’s ticket. And then for the first time Jeremy James saw the football pitch. It was quite different to football pitches on the television, because this one was very big and grassy. You certainly couldn’t get this big grassy one on to the little television screen at home, and that was a fact.
‘Come on, Jeremy James!’ said Daddy, and pulled him along to a place where people had their feet. When Daddy and Jeremy James arrived, the people took their feet away, and Daddy sat down. Jeremy James sat down as well, though he thought it a bit funny to sit down where people normally put their feet. It was hard, too.
‘We’re better off in the stand,’ said Daddy. ‘You can see better, too.’
‘Is this the stand, Daddy?’ asked Jeremy James.
‘Yes,’ said Daddy.
‘Well why are we sitting down, then?’ asked Jeremy James.
‘This is where you sit down,’ said Daddy.
‘Then why’s it called the stand?’ asked Jeremy James.
‘That’s an interesting question,’ said Daddy, ‘but I haven’t come here to give a lesson on semantics.’
Mummy, of course, would have said ‘Hmmph’, but Daddy often used long words that didn’t exist when he couldn’t answer a question. Semantics was one of his favourite words, though Jeremy James knew it was only the name of a tabby cat three doors away.
Someone was saying something over the loudspeaker. It sounded like, ‘Worple shob worple forby gambridge Number Two,’ and Jeremy James assumed he was checking that the footballers had all done the necessary before the game started. Grown-ups had a thing about going to the lavatory before you did anything.
Then all of a sudden everybody shouted, and some men came running on to the field, kicking a ball. They were dressed in red and white, and most of the shouting wasn’t very friendly. But when more men came running on to the field, kicking another ball, and all dressed in blue and white, even Daddy started shouting a funny sort of ‘worp worp!’ shout, as if he knew them.
‘Are they your friends, Daddy?’ asked Jeremy James.
‘They’re the home team,’ said Daddy.
Jeremy James was quite sure he had never seen any of the men at home, but Daddy was shouting again, and it was best not to interrupt.
A man in black – ‘Has his grandma died, Daddy?’ asked Jeremy James – blew a whistle, almost as well as Jeremy James could blow his whistle, everybody shouted again, and the men started kicking the ball and running round the field. Jeremy James watched for a little while, and Daddy told him the names of some of the men in blue, though Jeremy James didn’t know any of them, and couldn’t remember any of them once Daddy had told him. Daddy said the men were trying to kick the ball into the net at the end of the pitch, but Jeremy James never saw anybody trying to kick the ball into the net at all. Most of the time the ball wasn’t anywhere near the net, and the men seemed to be trying to kick it in any other direction but the net. Sometimes the men didn’t even kick the ball, but kicked each other, and then everybody shouted and the man in black blew his whistle and waved his arms. Once the ball came up into the sitting-down stand, very near to Daddy, and Jeremy James reckoned even he could kick the ball closer to the net.
Nobody scored a goal, and the man in black at last blew the whistle, and the players walked slowly off the pitch. Daddy then started talking to the man next to him, and Jeremy James heard him say, ‘The ref needs his blooming eyes tested.’ So Jeremy James turned to the man next to him – who had glasses and a funny chin – and said, ‘The ref needs his blooming eyes tested.’ The man with glasses and a funny chin seemed a little surprised, so Jeremy James added, ‘That’s what my Daddy says.’
After some loud music and a lot of talking, the players came out again, and the man in black blew his whistle, and the running and kicking went on as before. Jeremy James noticed that when a man in blue kicked the ball or a man in red, the crowd was happy, and when a man in red kicked the ball or a man in blue, they lost their tempers and shouted things. But obviously Daddy had made a mistake about the ball going into the net, because nobody seemed even to try and kick it in. Until hours and hours had gone by, and the man in black was looking at his watch as if he was learning to tell the time. And then suddenly one of the men in red kicked the ball very hard, and it went straight into the net.
‘Oh good!’ shouted Jeremy James. ‘He’s got it in! He got it in the net, Daddy!’
And then all the people with blue and white scarves and blue and white flowers turned round and looked at Jeremy James, because in the silence his voice came out loud and clear, and Daddy’s face went rather red, and he told Jeremy James to keep quiet. And the man in black blew his whistle for a long time, and the players stopped running altogether, and those in red jumped up and down waving their arms, whilst those in blue walked slowly away watching their own feet, and everybody stood up and shouted ‘Boo!’, as if they wanted to frighten the men on the pitch. And when they’d finished shouting ‘Boo!’, the people started to shuffle out of the sitting-down stand, and Daddy and Jeremy James shuffled with them, till they were back in the air again, and entering the leg-jungle out in the street, passing cars which were still hooting angrily – in fact doing everything in reverse from when they had come.
‘Did you enjoy it, dear?’ asked Mummy when they got home.
‘Yes thank you,’ said Jeremy James, ‘it was funny.’
‘Who won?’ Mummy asked Daddy.
‘Hmmph!’ said Daddy, ‘I must get on with my work,’ and he went into his study and closed the door firmly behind him. And he was so quiet that he must have been working very hard indeed.
CHAPTER FOUR
Feeding the Elephant
It was one of those bright blue-sky birdsong days when Mummy suddenly remembered that fresh air was good for you and the family hadn’t been out for days weeks and months.
‘Let’s go to the zoo,’ she said. Jeremy James smiled.
‘What, today?’ said Daddy. Jeremy James frowned.
‘Yes, today,’ said Mummy. ‘We could do with some fresh air, and anyway we haven’t been out for days weeks months.’
‘But it’s Saturday,’ said Daddy.
‘I know,’ said Mummy.
‘Well . . . the place’ll be crowded, and I mean . . .’
‘I suppose there’s a football match on the television,’ said Mummy.
‘Well, yes, as it happens there is, but . . .’
And so Mummy, Daddy, and Jeremy James went to the zoo. Jeremy James loved the zoo, and most of the time Mummy and Daddy behaved quite well when they went to the zoo, probably because th
ey liked it too. The only trouble was, they all liked different things. Daddy would settle in front of the lions’ cage and start talking about noble beasts in captivity, and they would have to drag him away or he’d stay there till sleeping-time. Mummy was fascinated by the birds with their bright feathers, and would start talking about colourful nature, patterns, grace, and then she had to be dragged away. But what annoyed Jeremy James most was that both Mummy and Daddy loved the monkeys, and whilst he and Mummy could drag Daddy away from the lions, and he and Daddy could drag Mummy away from the birds, he all on his own hadn’t got a chance of dragging both Mummy and Daddy away from the monkeys.
Today, Mummy and Daddy were extra keen on the monkeys.
‘Look at that!’ shrieked Mummy, as an ugly creature with a sore bottom jumped on to a rubber tyre and grinned.
‘They’re a scream,’ said Daddy.
But they weren’t a scream at all. The fact was that they didn’t do anything that Jeremy James couldn’t do just as well, but when monkeys did it, Mummy and Daddy laughed and thought it was wonderful, and when Jeremy James did it, he simply got told off. Only that very morning he had done a magnificent leap from the sofa on to Daddy’s armchair – not to mention braving the raging river a thousand feet below – and had merely been drily told not to jump on the furniture. Not a laugh, not a clap . . . just, ‘Don’t jump on the furniture.’ And when he swung from the apple tree, did they gaze at him with love and admiration in their eyes? No. Either they didn’t watch him at all, or if they did, they simply shouted, ‘Mind the apples, Jeremy James!’ or, ‘If you tear your trousers, you’ll see what you get!’ And as for bananas, that was the unfairest cheat of all. They gave bananas to the monkeys, just to see how they peeled them, and when the monkeys peeled their bananas, Mummy and Daddy would grin at each other and say how clever the monkeys were. But if Jeremy James asked for a banana (which he could peel a hundred times quicker than any old monkey), they’d say, ‘Wait till tea-time,’ and that was that.
Mummy and Daddy had got stuck in front of the monkeys. They would be there all day, and that was a fact, and Jeremy James couldn’t see the joke or the point. So Jeremy James waited till one of the monkeys was being particularly clever (beating his chest and showing his teeth, which was apparently a marvellous trick that had all the grown-ups roaring with laughter), and slipped away into the crowd and off in the direction of the elephant house. Elephants, after all, were the biggest animals, and they were easily the most interesting. Elephants could do things that Jeremy James couldn’t do at all. Like squirting water over themselves, picking up buns with their noses, and squashing cars. Elephants were really talented – not like monkeys.
There were lots of people at the elephant house, which wasn’t a house at all, but a great big sort of playground with rails round it and with a ditch on the other side of the rails. The elephants could just about reach the rail with their trunks, and sniff up the buns and things people were giving them. Daddy never let Jeremy James feed any animals, because he said there were notices everywhere with ‘Don’t Feed The Animals’ on them – but Daddy was the only one who ever saw these notices, and it was obvious that even if there were notices, the animals couldn’t have written them, so they were unfair. Everyone likes buns and sweets and biscuits and things, and the animals liked them too, so Daddy was probably being mean.
In his pocket, Jeremy James had two slices of bread. He’d smuggled them out of the house. They weren’t ordinary bread. They were bread with currants in. The sort of bread elephants dream about. And he’d brought them just for the elephants, and although he’d have liked a bite or two himself – especially of a curranty bit – he could see the expression on the elephant’s face already, and he knew the elephant knew the currant bread was for him. So Jeremy James didn’t take a single bite – not even to taste it.
‘Here!’ said Jeremy James, and reached out both slices at once. And then the elephant made a very silly mistake. He took both slices (with a scrapy, creepy, snuffly whiff of Jeremy James’s hand), but between hand and mouth, very foolishly, he forgot there were two. One he tossed into his mouth, and the other he let fall right on to the edge of the ditch.
‘Hey!’ said Jeremy James, ‘don’t forget the other one!’
But the elephant, who must have been a very stupid elephant, not only forgot it, but also ignored Jeremy James completely. He just turned his head away and looked around for someone else to feed him. And Jeremy James’s second slice of currant bread lay all uneaten on the edge of the ditch.
‘There, look!’ shouted Jeremy James.
‘On the edge of the ditch, look!’ shouted Jeremy James.
‘Opposite your foot!’ shouted Jeremy James.
The elephant nearly trod on it, but still didn’t see it. Jeremy James remembered one of Daddy’s words:
‘It’s opposite your blooming foot!’ he shouted, but the elephant didn’t take any notice.
There was only one thing Jeremy James could do. After all, a slice of currant bread is a slice of currant bread, and you don’t smuggle currant bread out of the house just to leave it lying on the edge of a ditch. ‘You’re a stupid elephant,’ said Jeremy James, as he slipped between the railings. ‘You’re as stupid as those monkeys.’
Jeremy James reached the edge of the ditch, and a great shout went up from the crowd behind as he picked up the slice of currant bread. Then everything seemed to go very quiet indeed. So quiet that Jeremy James turned round to see what was wrong, but all the people were still there – they were just quiet, that was all.
‘Here!’ said Jeremy James, holding out the currant bread. ‘Come on, you stupid elephant!’
The elephant slowly turned his head, at last spotted the currant bread, and scrapy-creepy-snuffle-whiffed it out of Jeremy James’s hand.
‘And about time too!’ said Jeremy James. Then he turned round, and squeezed back through the railings, straight into the grip of a man wearing a zoo-keeper uniform, a moustache, and a red face.
‘Where’s your mother and father?’ said the moustache.
‘I expect they’re still wasting their time watching those monkeys,’ said Jeremy James.
But just at that moment Mummy and Daddy arrived, and their faces looked rather red too, and when they saw Jeremy James they both said at the same time, ‘Where have you been?’ And then the moustache said something to them, and then Daddy said something to the moustache, and then the moustache said something to Daddy which made Daddy’s face go very red, and then Daddy said something to Mummy, and Mummy – rather roughly – jerked Jeremy James’s arm and led him away from the elephant house, leaving Daddy and the moustache talking together in loud voices.
‘You must never,’ said Mummy, ‘never, never, never go through fences or try and touch the animals. You understand? They’re very dangerous. You could have been killed!’
‘Well I was only giving him a piece of bread he’d dropped,’ said Jeremy James, ‘and if he hadn’t been such a stupid elephant, I wouldn’t have had to get it for him.’
But there wasn’t really much point in trying to explain it to Mummy, because she didn’t have much clue about animals. Someone who prefers monkeys to elephants can’t be expected to understand elephants – or little boys, if it comes to that.
CHAPTER FIVE
Buried Treasure
At the bottom of the garden, right next to the fence that was so tall nobody could ever know what was on the other side, was a patch of land that belonged exclusively to Jeremy James. It wasn’t a very big patch of land – because it wasn’t a very big garden – but it was by far the most interesting place Jeremy James knew. And when the weather was fine he would often sit down on the ground and watch the ants collecting bits of insects, or the worms wriggling down into the earth, or the flies washing their hands, and he would wish that he was as tiny as they were so that he could recognize their faces and talk to them.
Mummy did give him some seeds once to plant, but nothing ever came of them
, and the only thing that flourished on Jeremy James’s land was what Daddy used to call flowers, and Mummy called weeds. Mummy said they should be torn up and thrown away, but Jeremy James thought they looked nice, and as it was his patch of land, he was allowed to keep them. Daddy thought he should keep them, too, because he said that Jeremy James didn’t have to learn to weed at his age.
Now the night before the day we’re talking about, Mummy had read Jeremy James a very exciting story about pirates, who used to rob people and then bury their treasure deep in the ground where nobody else could find it. (Daddy said they weren’t called pirates any more, but tacksinspectus, or some funny name like that.) Jeremy James liked that story very much, and he reckoned that if there had been any pirates around where he lived, there was only one place they could possibly have chosen to bury their treasure and that was the most interesting place he knew. And so the next day – and next day is the day that we’re talking about – he picked up his seaside spade and marched off to the bottom of the garden in search of fame and fortune.
The earth there wasn’t quite as soft as the sand beside the sea, but pirates are clever people and don’t bury their treasure where it’s easy to find. Jeremy James knew that the harder it was, the more treasure there would be, and so he dug, and dug, and dug, and dug, until his arms and legs began to send complaints up to his head. Fouf, that’s enough, they said, we arms and legs could do with a rest and a nice helping of strawberries and ice cream and fizzy lemonade and a bar of chocolate and a . . . but treasure-hunters’ heads never take any notice of their arms and legs.
Elephants Don't Sit on Cars Page 2
