The Tip of My Tongue

by Trezza Azzopardi

  *

  Geraint has got loads of posters on his wall, exactly like I’ve got on my wall at home only different. He hasn’t got David or Woody or Les, he’s got someone he says is called Iggy Pop and some people called The New York Dolls, and some ladies with their swimming costumes on, and some boys called The Sexy Pistols. He says they are the Antidote to Everything that’s Wrong with this Society. But I think they look very rude and untidy with their tongues poking out.

  After Aunty Celia went back to bed, Geraint ran in the bathroom and came back with a flannel and a bowl. I said, Not on your Nelly, No Deal, Buster! because I remembered last time when my toe caught on fire, but he said, It won’t hurt, I promise. I checked his fingers weren’t doing a Cree, and let him put the flannel on my head. It did hurt but not as much as my toe did so I didn’t say anything, and then he took the flannel away again and said, It’s bleeding like stink, hang on, and ran away this time into his mum and dad’s bathroom.

  I had a look in his mirror and he’d made a line down the middle of my head just below my hair which was very thin and very bleeding, especially when I waggled my eyebrows. I didn’t know books could be a weapon and it gave me a brilliant idea. Then he came back with a stick like a lipstick only white-coloured and said, Right. Keep still, and he crayoned all down the cut bit.

  Is it glue? I said, because I couldn’t think what use it would be if it was just a lipstick, and he said, No, it’s the Old Man’s styptic pencil. Stops the bleeding. I hope.

  Will I bleed forever? I said, and he said, Jolly well hope not.

  Then he put a big square plaster on my head and said, Don’t do that stupid thing with your eyebrows, Enid, you’ll make it start again.

  When he went down to make me a cup of tea with five sugars for the shock, I had a really good spy on his room. It had got the posters and some books around and his desk with his radio on it and a stereo­gram and some records and a fountain pen in a case and his big watch on the table by the bed. But underneath the bed was the best thing ever, because it was absolutely disgusting with cups and plates and stuff with all green on them and socks and stinky underpants and right underneath there was a pile of naughty magazines like my dad’s got with naked ladies on the front.

  It was too late to get up when I heard Geraint and the saucer rattling so I fell myself sideways and pretended to have a faint.

  Get up and drink this, he said, and sat himself on the end of the bed. While I was having my tea he went, Enid, what kind of aeroplane crashed into your house? all casual like, and I went, A massive one, of course.

  And he went, What, like a 747?

  Which was obviously a trick question because who has ever heard of that? I wasn’t falling for it, so I just told him the true facts.

  Actually, it was a Concorde.

  What, you’re saying Concorde flew into your house?

  Correct, I said, because that’s what Mrs Reynolds always says when I get my times table question right.

  I didn’t see it on the news, he said, and then he was quiet for a minute and let me drink my tea and then he said, And I didn’t read it in the papers either.

  It was in the South Wales Echo, I said, My dad told me.

  Do you believe everything your father tells you?

  Why shouldn’t I?

  This was clearly a trap and I was instantly on Red Alert and Stand By for Action.

  Just wondering, he said, then he looked up at the wall behind him and went, Shall we get this off?

  When I looked up there were millions of red dots all over the wall which were blood dots from when my head spurted. I rubbed one off with my finger and Geraint pulled a face.

  Uggh, that’s so unhygienic!

  I didn’t say anything, I just bent down by the side of the bed and got out his stinky underpants and then I said, Shall I use these, then?

  And for the second time in Living History, Geraint went bright red.

  Fifteen

  Uncle Horace’s Study is the brownest room I have ever seen. Every single thing is done in brown apart from the light on his table which is green. Uncle Horace is brown as well because he has on the brown jumper Aunty Celia’s sister gave him for his birthday which is not until next month. When he opened the parcel, he went, O joy, and he must love it a lot because he wears it all the time when he is doing the garden.

  He is sitting behind his table talking on the phone and writing things down on a paper with his fountain pen and apart from his red nose he could be the Invisible Man. I’m wondering if this room is like my dad’s Brown Dudgeon. I’m not surprised he has to get pills from the doctor if it’s brown like this inside his head.

  I have to wait while Uncle Horace talks to someone about mines. I know they have mines in Russia, because I borrowed a book out of the library to help me learn Russian and be a spy, so I’m thinking he might be sending me to the coal mines so I must be in Serious Trouble. That is why I am here in the brown room.

  After Geraint bust my head open with my mother’s poems, I had this brilliant idea that I could use the Pears Encyclopaedia for spying. It was a very boring book anyway, so while Aunty Celia was having a lie down I got a pen out of the Secretaire in the hall which is just a dear sideboard, and put my gun on the top page of the Encyclopaedia and traced all round it like we did with our hands once at St Saviour’s. Then I got the pointiest knife out of the kitchen drawer and cut all round where I traced. It took ages but it was worth it because after I cut out all the pages I had a secret place to hide my gun, which is called A Concealment Device which all spies must have for their weapons and secret files. But I ended up with loads of pages shaped like a gun that I had to get rid of because as a spy you have to Destroy The Evidence.

  I put the pages on the bonfire in the garden that Uncle Horace likes to do in his jumper, because that is Destroying The Evidence. But at teatime Uncle Horace came in holding a bit of paper that looked like a gun shape and said, What the devil might this be?

  I didn’t tell, because spies don’t ever spill the beans even when they are tortured. But he must have bugged me with a special microphone because here I am waiting to Discover my Fate. Even though I didn’t tell anyone except now I think of it I might have told my mother when I was saying my prayers last night.

  He comes off the phone and goes, Sorry, Enid. Now, come here, and makes his finger in a little crook. I go round the table but not very near in case he is going to stab me with the fountain pen which often have poison inside them and are one of the best ways of killing a spy.

  Let me look at you, he says, and turns the green light round and points it in my face. He is going to interrogate me!

  I will never spill the beans! I say, and he does a big laugh like a hoot and then he goes, It’s alright, Enid, I think we both know who’s responsible for this, and as he’s saying it he’s staring at the plaster on my head which is nearly falling off because I haven’t had a new one since yesterday when it happened. He has a brown drink on his desk and he gulps it like medicine and says, We’ll just wait for your Aunty, dear, and get to the bottom of it, shall we?

  Then he goes in his desk and he puts the glass in the drawer and gets out a little shiny tin and he says, Want one of these? and inside the tin are white pills. They are just like the ones spies have to take when they need to die, so I say, No thank you, Uncle Horace. But then he puts a pill in his own mouth and I’m sorry I didn’t have one because they’re only mints and I love mints.

  How did you get that cut, Enid, he says, all casual, and I say, all casual back, Oh, just a book just fell on me.

  A book? You mean – let’s use an example – the Pears Encyclopaedia that Aunty Celia bought you?

  Umm, no, my mother’s book of poems, I say, because his eyes are twinkling at me. I think he must be On To Me and the interrogation about the gun will start any minute now.

  That’s not a very heavy book, Enid, he says.

  I don’t really know what he means so I say, No, but the corners are rea
lly sharp.

  At that second he has to stop his interrogation because Aunty Celia comes in and her hair is a fright like a nest all over her head, and she says, You rang, m’lud? in a very sulky voice. I’m wondering if she might be a Double Agent.

  Look at the child, he goes, and she looks at me all down to my socks and then she looks back at him with the same face.

  Notice anything different about her? he goes, which makes me Stand By For Action because I haven’t noticed anything different about me and I’m me.

  Look at her head, at her head, you appalling lush! She’s got a bloody great cut on it! That useless waste of space has gone and injured her!

  What? Not the pool man? says Aunty Celia, He didn’t let her fall in again?

  No! Not Mr Lock, you loon! Our lazy good-for-nothing son!

  Uncle Horace’s face goes the same colour as his nose, nearly, and Aunty Celia has a tizzy and puts her hands up to her cheeks and says, Oh, no, I’m such a bad mother. Whatever happened? What did he do, darling?

  So I start to say, You know when – and I’m going to say – when Geraint hit me with the book yesterday and you shouted at us to clean up the pigsty, but instead I don’t say anything. My mother told me my tongue is The Most Potent Weapon in my armoury but you must only use your most potent weapon when you’ve got no other weapons left and I have still got my gun. And anyway my tongue doesn’t want to be a weapon against Geraint, even if he is a Useless Waste of Space and a Good For Nothing.

  What shall we do, Horace? she goes, and he flops back in his seat and has a long think and says, Enid, can you wait outside please? We won’t be a minute.

  I am really happy to wait outside because it is easier to spy on people when they aren’t watching you. I leave the door open a little crack so that I don’t have to bend down to the keyhole because bending makes my head go bang bang like that on the cut bit, and I hear Uncle Horace with his strict voice on going,

  Firstly, you will take her to Doctor Phipps and get that wound checked out this morning. She’ll probably need a tetanus jab. Secondly, you will drive her there and you will drive her back and there will be no incidents of the gypsy variety. And thirdly, you will keep your nib out of the Quink and look after this child properly until we have to give her back to that orang-utan she calls her father. Have I made myself clear?

  What about Geraint? says Aunty Celia, I told you he needs help with his problems, but would you listen, would you?

  I will help Geraint with his problems, he says, Leave that to me.

  Then it goes quiet so I run quick over to the Secretaire and pretend to be admiring the shininess of the top bit and Aunty Celia comes out putting her hanky up her sleeve and says, Get your coat, sweetheart, it looks like rain again.

  The interrogation must be over and They Know Nothing! If I say so myself, I am becoming a very professional spy.

  *

  Will I have a scar?

  Nope, don’t think so.

  The doctor is putting really thin bits of string all the way over my cut one by one without even using a needle and cotton.

  I’m a bit sorry I won’t have a scar, partly because all the best spies have them, but mainly because every time I saw it, it would let me think about my mother’s book and then I could think about my mother as well.

  I have read all of her poems now as they are very little and easy. Geraint is right though, they don’t rhyme, but that’s probably because my mother was very busy Slaving in the Kitchen all the time and couldn’t think of the words to rhyme with the other words.

  The one I like best is about the nymph who lives under the water like Aqua Marina. One day she goes, Bye bye, see you later, to all her nymph friends and climbs a ladder up to the sky but she never comes back down because when she gets to the top she grows big wings and they keep making her float and won’t let her go down again. It sounds sad but my mother says in the poem, Now she dances on the water, or something like that, and I think my mother means she is probably in Australia on a cruise like Mrs Mickey was before she came back and broke her ankle in four places.

  Sixteen

  Don’t sulk, Geraint, you’re not a baby.

  Nor is she, he goes, and prods his pointy finger right in the back of my head, It’s not fair!

  Life’s not fair, says Aunty Celia, It’s about time you learnt that. You used to get car sick when you were little.

  So?

  And we let you sit in the front, don’t you remember?

  No.

  Geraint is very cross because every time Aunty Celia takes us to choir practice he has to sit in the back seat and I must sit in the front because the front is where I do not get sick. I have been going to choir practice for three times now, and the teacher is not a teacher he is a Vicar. You would never guess though because he doesn’t have a Vicar dress, he has on jeans and just an ordinary shirt and wears his hairstyle like a Young Person. He likes Young People, they are The New Blood of Christ, and he also likes to be called by his ordinary name which is Alexander, but not all of it.

  Call me Zander, he says, whenever anyone forgets.

  Vicar goes, Ah, the New Blood! when he sees me and he smiles like he’s lost a penny and found a pound. Then sometimes he says to Geraint, Don’t sing this bit, Gerry, there’s a good chap, on account of Geraint’s voice going up and down a lot and making us sound like a Nest of Badgers.

  We sing ‘O Come All ye Faithful’ and ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Away in A Manger’ and ‘We Three Kings’. I know all the songs off by heart but even though Geraint has been going to choir for years, he always forgets the words. He goes: While shepherds washed their cocks by night, or he’ll sing, On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, A suck job in a pear tree, which always makes the boy behind him laugh.

  The boy behind is called Jeffrey and he has got a million pimples all over his face covered in pus and his breath is really, really bad as well so I try to stand on the other side so he is not putting his dragon breath all over my head when he’s singing and making my hair go green. The lady behind me is called Mrs Price-Porter but everyone calls her Mrs PeePee which is hysterical. She has got the asthma really bad and sometimes she takes out a little tube between the verses and makes a noise like a fart.

  Vicar likes me to sing a bit on my own, he calls it the Solo. I think it is because he must know I can speak Russian and am brilliant at foreign languages.

  This is you, Enid, he says, when it comes to the bit where I have to go,

  Glor-or-or-or-or-or, Glor-or-or-or-or-or, Glor-or-or-or-or-or-or-Ria! Hosanna in Exchelsiss!

  It is my favourite part of the whole song.

  We are in Final Rehearsals for the Christmas Concert next week, even though actually Christmas doesn’t start until the week after when I stop going to school and go home to my dad.

  I’m pretending that I will be still stuck here because it is Peace and Goodwill all round the Land with Geraint not allowed to be so Waste of Space and Uncle Horace being funny and Aunty Celia not Mainlining the Malt, as Geraint always calls it when she’s dusting the drinks cabinet, which means her hair looks much better.

  Aunty Celia gets very excited about Christmas. She says this time of year is Thrilling. At dinnertime, which happens at night in Devon, I ask her if she wants anything from Santa, and she stares all funny at Uncle Horace over her cola and says, Um, let me think. A new car? And then I ask Uncle Horace and he says, Um, let me think. A new wife? which makes Aunty Celia look very cross, so I go quick to Geraint, What do you want? and he gives a little speech like this: Christmas is just a bourgeois institu­tion designed by the Powers That Be to fool the lumpen proletariat into spending their hard-earned money on unessential frippery. It is what Marx calls the opium of the people.

  Uncle Horace does one of his hoot laughs and says, Then you won’t be wanting that new Casio that you’re always harping on about. Excellent. I shall save my hard-earned money. By the way, I think you’ll find he was referring to religion.<
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  Splitting hairs, old man, says Geraint, but he looks cheesed-off all the same and starts chopping his gravy into blobs.

  And what about you, Enid? says Aunty Celia, Can you guess what Santa’s going to bring you?

  I have a little think. It probably wouldn’t be a dog. It probably wouldn’t be a Bionic Woman doll even though I would love that, she has got a bionic ear which must be really good for spying. What I would like is for Santa to fly me home on his sleigh so I could be with my dad. But before I can say anything, Aunty Celia says,

  I’ll give you a clue. What is your hat for?

  My head?

  Your riding hat?

  My riding head?

  You’re getting warm, sweetheart. How would you like a pony?

  I’m going to tell her I’d much prefer to go home when Uncle Horace starts choking on his dinner and we all rush round to hit him on the back and fetch him some water. When he has stopped crying he says,

  Celia, can we have a word in private? and they go off to his Study. I can’t go and spy on them because Geraint is still sitting smashing his potato into gloops. He looks at me all sneaky and then he goes,

  You know the dress rehearsal for the Carol concert next week? and I go, Ye-es, in a way that means, Of course I do I am not stupid, and he goes, You know we’re going on a coach? And I go, Ye-es, again, because it’s all been arranged – Aunty Celia must take us to the bus stop in Tiverton and the coach will pick us up on the way to the Cathedral and then Aunty Celia will fetch us from the bus stop after we’ve done our singing practice.

  What if the coach goes somewhere else? he says, and I’ve got no answer to that, because why would the coach want to go somewhere else? But he’s carrying on, and as he’s carrying on, I get a funny feeling he is making a plot.

  What if the coach was going to Caerphilly?

  The way he says Caerphilly makes it sound wrong, but then he goes, You do know where Caerphilly is, don’t you?