by Alan Garner
I loved my stamps. Each one had a picture or a pattern with strange words on it, and sometimes just signs I couldn’t understand. The words were in the language of the country they belonged to and had to be worked out if they weren’t printed in English too. The only stamps without any words on them at all were British, because Great Britain had invented the Penny Post in 1840 and everyone in the world knew that, so British stamps didn’t have to say where they came from.
I liked working out the names. Some were easy. ‘Norge’ was Norway; ‘Belgique’ or ‘Belgie’ were Belgium; and ‘Nederland’ was Holland because Holland was also called The Netherlands. But ‘Poczta Polska’ was harder, and I worked out it was Poland because I had a stamp postmarked ‘Warsza’ with the end missing at the edge, but it must be ‘Warsaw’. And ‘Helvetia’ was Switzerland because there were stamps showing a man with a crossbow, and he was William Tell who’d shot an apple off his son’s head.
But Tannu Tuva was the hardest. Although one part of a stamp had ‘POSTAGE TUVA’ on it I couldn’t find the country on any maps, not even in my grandma’s big Philips’ Handy-Volume Atlas of the World. One stamp was an upside-down purple triangle and there was an elk’s head and the value ‘1 TUG’ and the word ‘TbBA’. So, just as I did when I learnt to read small letters, I worked out it must be Tuva because it was four letters, beginning with ‘T’ and ending in ‘A’. So ‘b’ was ‘U’ and ‘B’ was ‘V’. But where Tuva was I didn’t know, because it wasn’t in stamp albums either. Then I found the Russian alphabet in a war magazine and saw I was right. But there was nowhere called Tannu Tuva in Russia, nor in my grandma’s Countries of the World books.
The stamps had pictures of camels, and reindeer, and bears, and foxes, and turkeys, and lynxes, and men hunting with bows and arrows and dressed in furs and wearing pointed hats, so I decided it must be a cold country somewhere the other side of Russia and near Mongolia because the bows had big curves; and I went on collecting the stamps because they were triangle or diamond shapes, and I was interested in animals and liked finding out what they were. But some of the stamps with postmarks still had gum on the back and hadn’t been licked, and that was strange.
Tannu Tuva became a magic land for me, and I wanted to find it and go there; but I never did.
I formed a stamp club to study stamps and wrote a set of Club Rules that everybody had to sign and swear to obey, and I made a tent for a meeting place by draping a blanket over the clothes maiden in the Middle Room where I kept my pet budgerigar.
Her name was Bunty. She had a yellow head and a green body, and she lived in a cage hung from a beam in the ceiling. I fed her on birdseed and wedged a piece of cuttlefish bone between the bars for her to nibble to keep her healthy and I changed her water every day. There was a mirror for her to look in so she wouldn’t feel lonely, and a bell to play with, and she sat on a swinging perch and chirruped, and sometimes she climbed around the bars using her claws and beak to hold on. I was teaching her to speak, and she made a sound a bit like ‘Hello’, and always joined in when we were talking.
The only member of the stamp club was John, and he wouldn’t sign to obey the Rules, so we lay in the tent and counted our stamps and swapped some, and then we took it in turns to be prisoners of the Cherokees and tied each other up with my mother’s clothes line and were rescued by Crackerjack the Wonder Whip Man out of The Dandy.
Sometimes, but not often, Brian came to the club. He didn’t join, because he didn’t collect stamps, but we let him in.
Everybody liked Brian, though he didn’t play much. One of his legs was a lot shorter than the other and he couldn’t move fast. He had two rods that went down from his boot to an iron ring, and we all wanted to have one ourselves because it stopped him from being bullied. If anybody tried he crunched their feet so they couldn’t walk, and he cracked coke with the ring, which we couldn’t do with our boots or clogs.
The reason for cracking coke was to make hand grenades.
The coke pile was in the playground, heaped against the vicarage fence. There was a hedge of holly and yew trees on the other side so we wouldn’t bother Canon Gravell at playtime, but there were gaps between the branches and we could peep through enough to see him sitting in his deck chair on a fine day wearing a cream-coloured jacket and a straw hat and reading his paper.
Brian cracked the lumps of coke to a size to fit our hands, and we held the lumps the way we’d seen soldiers and the Home Guard practising.
If we were right-handed we held the grenade against our chest in our right hand and pulled out the safety pin from the spoon, which was a spring lever we kept a tight grip on because when it was let go it set off the fuse which made the grenade explode five seconds later. If we were left-handed, we did the same thing, but with the grenade upside down. This meant we always pulled the safety pin out of the way so it didn’t snag the spoon.
Then we stood ready, facing the enemy, and pointed our free arm in the direction we were going to throw. We held the grenade at arm’s length behind us and lobbed it overhead to clear the hedge and land on Canon Gravell. Then we flung ourselves flat to avoid the explosion.
We always missed, but a few times we were close enough for the sound to make him twitch and look up from his paper. And once, when he was mowing the lawn, we saw him hit a piece of coke lying in the grass, and we heard what he said.
The next week, when he came into school for Special Prayers and told us to be good children and keep our hearts clean in Time of War, it was a gas mask practice day, but Canon Gravell didn’t wear his though he had it with him. We said the prayers through the rubber sides of our gas masks, and he got angry with the rude noises we made, but we weren’t bothered, because we knew what he’d said that other day the week before when he mowed the lawn.
Brian couldn’t throw grenades, on account of his short leg, but he kept us supplied with ammunition. And in winter he made the coke into smaller pieces we could build snowballs around to throw against bullies. This worked, but there was always the danger the bullies could throw the coke back.
Brian liked the stamp club because he could talk to Bunty, and I was worried in case he was teaching her to talk better than I could do.
Then my mother was ill and had to go to The Cottage Hospital. My father was working at Ringway aerodrome painting camouflage, so I went and stayed with my grandma at Belmont.
Every day before school I called in at home to feed Bunty and give her water and clean her cage. And I put my hand through her door and she came and perched on my finger and we talked. And it was the same after school, when I spent more time with her because I had to put up the blackout curtains before I left for when my father came home from work at Ringway aerodrome, so he could switch the light on, and I was worried she’d be lonely in the dark.
One morning, it was very sunny. I set off from Belmont down Heyes Lane. When I got to The Cottage Hospital I waved to my mother because she had a bed next to a window and could wave back. Then I went along Joshua’s Stile, past The Regal into Moss Lane and up to our house. I let myself in with a key and called hello to Bunty from the Scullery and went into the Middle Room to take down the blackout curtains.
Bunty was lying on the floor of her cage below her perch with her claws pointing upwards and her eyes were shut and she was dead.
I opened the cage door and touched her, then I ran all the way to Belmont and held on to my grandma and she held me and had that special grandma smell and I was crying and couldn’t stop.
She said it wasn’t my fault, but I said it was and I knew it was and I shouldn’t have left her by herself alone in the dark. My grandma said it really wasn’t my fault. Bunty must have pined, she said. I didn’t know that word, but I didn’t forget it, and I still couldn’t stop crying.
My grandma put on her coat and her hat with the silver pin, and all the time she never let go of me. Then we went back home together.
She opened the door of the cage and lifted Bunty out and gave her to me so
I felt the body was stiff and Bunty wasn’t there any more. Then she let me carry Bunty in one hand and kept hold of my other, and we locked the house door and went back to Belmont. Her skin was rough and her knuckles were hard and swollen, but she held me gently.
We found an empty Heinz Salad Cream jar and I washed it and dried it, and I put Bunty inside. She fitted without squashing, and I screwed the lid back on.
Then my grandma gave me a trowel and we went into the front garden and I dug a grave and put the Heinz Salad Cream jar with Bunty into the ground and covered it with earth and we said a little prayer and I wanted never ever to have another pet again.
Bike
Mr Henshall died, and I got his bike, but I couldn’t ride it. I didn’t know how.
Mr Henshall was old and had a white moustache like my grandad’s, and he delivered our milk. He carried the milk in four aluminium cans, two on each handlebar, and he lived near my grandad on Mottram Road at the corner of Hough Lane. He stopped at our house every morning and poured the milk from the can into the lid, to measure how much, and then from the lid into my mother’s jug. Sometimes his grown-up daughter Margaret brought the milk on her bike, which was different because it didn’t have a crossbar. Crossbars were for men.
Margaret had short black hair and bright red cheeks and was always smiling. My mother said I should marry someone like Margaret when I grew up because I was highly strung and I needed a farmer’s daughter to keep me calm. I said I’d marry Margaret.
Mr Henshall always smiled, too, and so did a lot of other old people. There was Mrs Worthington, who was dressed in black, with a silver pin through her hat like my grandma’s, and her coat nearly touched the floor. She pushed a big black pram with a hood, just the same as my pram, but it was full of pikelets she’d baked. She wore men’s black lace-up work boots and walked in short fast steps. My mother used to buy me two pikelets for my tea and I ate them hot with Lyle’s Golden Syrup spread over them. On the syrup tin there was a picture of a dead lion with a hole in its side and bees flying from it, and below were the words: OUT OF THE STRONG CAME FORTH SWEETNESS. My grandma said this was a story about Samson in The Bible where Samson was going to a wedding and he met a lion and killed it with his bare hands. And when he came back from the wedding he saw bees had built a hive inside the dead body.
And there was Mrs Barton. She had a tall white wooden cupboard on wheels with cart handles, and inside the cupboard were shelves of cakes she made with her husband. He had a white moustache, like Mr Henshall’s but bigger, and it stuck out sideways. He carried his cakes in two wide baskets covered with white teacloths, one on each arm, and he got to The Royal Oak for twelve o’clock every day, when the pub opened. He put the baskets on stone ledges either side of the porch of the doorway and stayed drinking till the pub shut at twenty to three. Then he slept on a sofa in a back room until the bar opened again at half past six. But Mrs Barton pushed her cupboard round the village to sell her cakes, and children used to run after her, singing:
‘Roll along, Cakey Barton, roll along!
Let the wheels of your wagon sing a song!
While Jack Barton’s drinking ale
All his cakes are going stale!
Roll along, Cakey Barton, roll along!’
One old man I knew never smiled. He was Mr Wright, who was a farmer and lived at The Wizard. He was kind and talked to me and gave me liquorice root sticks, which were the only sweets that weren’t rationed. He wore a bowler hat and had the thickest moustache in the village, and he made jokes. But he never smiled.
Then Mr Henshall died, and Margaret gave me his bike.
I liked playing at Henshall’s farm because I could go by myself and make dens in the haystack, and there was the frame of an old lorry in the orchard. It was rusty and had no wheels or seat or top, but it did have a steering wheel which turned, and I could stand and drive it.
At the back of the house there was a big wooden water butt to catch the rain from the thatch roof. The water was dark and smelt of slime, and I had to climb on two bricks to look. When I put anything in the water it changed colour as it sank and it disappeared before it reached the bottom.
The best things to sink were plates, which I took from Margaret’s kitchen.
If I held a plate dead level on the surface and lowered it gently, so the water filled it without rippling and then let go and kept my hands still, the plate sank slowly and flipped and rocked like a manta ray fish in a film I’d seen at The Regal, and it changed from white to green as it went, until it was gone. Saucers were the same but quicker.
There was one thing scared me at the farm, and that was Margaret’s dog. It was an Alsatian, and it was fastened by a rope through its collar to a ring fixed in the wall, and when it saw anybody it snarled and barked and jumped at the end of the rope. Margaret said it was only being friendly, but it wasn’t.
If I wanted to get into the house through the front door I pressed myself against the stones below the garden hedge and there was just room for me to get past because the rope made the dog fall backwards. One day, though, as I was going towards the door and before I reached the hedge, the dog jumped at me with its mouth wide open, and I saw the ring fly out of the wall, and everything went different.
The ring stopped, and the rope hung in the air, and the dog floated and made no noise although I could see its teeth and down its throat and smell its breath. I ran past it into the house and slammed the door shut hard. Then I heard a thud against the door and a growling and a scratching at the wood and Margaret was holding me tight and I never saw the dog again.
My mother said she would teach me to ride my bike. I was worried, but John had a bike, and he could ride and he told me we could play speedway racing same as at Belle Vue, so I said I would.
The first thing my mother taught me was how to prop the bike upright against the kerb on one pedal so it stood by itself. Then I had to get hold of the handlebars and cock my leg over the saddle to the other side. This was because the crossbar was in the way, and I said if I had a bike like Margaret’s I shouldn’t have to do that and could get on easily, but my mother said it was a girl’s way and I’d look a sissy.
When I was sitting on the saddle I had to put my feet on the pedals. I fell sideways, and my mother caught me and I leant against her on the saddle. The bike could freewheel, but she made me turn the pedals and we set off down Trafford Road.
I was still leaning against my mother, and I was wobbling because I couldn’t hold the handlebars straight, but we got as far as Heyes Lane and then we came back. My mother had to push me uphill and I wobbled even more, but she made me press on the pedals as they came round.
We went to Mottram Road the next day because a lot of it was nearly level, and after a week of practising I could sit up and pedal with my mother holding me with one hand and the saddle with the other.
Soon I was able to pedal hard enough to go faster, and my mother had to run. We went along Mottram Road, under the Woodhill, up the bank to the Hough Chapel, down Hough Lane, along Moss Road to Heyes Lane, past where Mrs Finch’s house had been, past The Royal Oak, The Cottage Hospital and Joshua’s Stile, round the corner into Trafford Road at the new Council Offices which had been built where there used to be a shop that sold birdseed, past the end of Tyler Street and up to home.
We did this every day, and every day I got faster until my mother said she was out of puff, but she still kept running.
Then one afternoon, when we got to The Royal Oak, my mother clapped her hands and I saw she was running without holding me, and I fell off the bike and grazed my knees.
But after that I was all right and could go off on my own and explore where the roads went, further than I’d been strong enough to walk before.
And John and I could play speedway racing.
John’s bike had tyres with treads on, but my tyres were worn smooth and didn’t grip. John went from Tyler Street up Trafford Road, and I went the other way to where Trafford Road joins Heyes Lane. T
hen we set off full-pelt head-on towards each other so we reached Tyler Street together at the same time and John had to turn left into it, and me right, by leaning over, dragging one foot and skidding and sending dirt flying; and because my tyres had no tread they slithered and skidded better than John’s and threw up more dirt. And we never crashed.
But I liked exploring best. Sometimes my mother came with me on her bike.
We rode to Congleton, where my grandma had lived at 47 Crescent Road before she came to live at Belmont, and I’d been born there. To Congleton and back was more than twenty miles, and it made my legs ache and my bottom was sore.
The people we visited talked about things I didn’t know. And there was a man called Billy Jarvis who was the son of one of my mother’s friends. He didn’t seem to have a job, because he was always at home, but he had very blue eyes and he’d built a model steam train that used real coal and ran on lines, and he’d made all the parts of everything himself. He could also play the piano without music. My mother said the first time he saw a piano he sat down, hit a few notes and then could play any tune as if he’d learnt properly. But she said he couldn’t read books. No matter of that, I liked him.
Because Congleton was such a long way we had to ride straight there and back without looking at things. My mother was interested in going, not stopping. There was a windmill water pump I wanted to see, but when I was with my mother I couldn’t. So I used to explore by myself. And that was how I found churches.
They were all different. The first I found was Nether Alderley church. It wasn’t like St Philip’s next to the school, where no one was buried. It had a graveyard with old tombstones, some with strange writing on them which was Latin and Greek, and I wanted to learn how to read them, and I wanted to be buried there when I died.
