‘Please, Sid!’
‘No!’
She was nearly crying. ‘It’s horrible of you! Just because they’re your gerbils! But they’re Bubble and Squeak, and they’re in danger of their lives! You don’t care! You don’t love them!’
‘Get out of my room!’ said Sid in a low, savage whisper. ‘Go on – get out!’
The next morning, even before they went downstairs to breakfast, Sid said to Peggy: ‘Ask Dawn. Only for a week, mind. Or ten days at the outside.’
The arrangement was made easily enough.
Mrs Sparrow, when she heard of it, said nothing at all, but surely she could not have been displeased. Bill Sparrow said: ‘Good old Dawn Mudd!’
The only one who questioned the gerbils’ going away was Amy; and Sid and Peggy satisfied her by calling it a special holiday for Bubble and Squeak. Amy knew only one kind of special holiday; so she made seaside buckets and spades for Bubble and Squeak. The buckets were of paper, with cotton thread handles; the spades were of more paper, with matchstick handles. Amy pushed this equipment through the bars of the cage. Bubble and Squeak fell upon it greedily and gnawed it all to bits within a few minutes.
Amy, not minding at all about the buckets and spades, said, ‘When will they come back from their special holiday with the Mudds?’
‘A week on Sunday without fail,’ said Peggy.
Mrs Sparrow had not seemed to be listening, but now she said, ‘Perhaps the Mudds would like to keep them for good? If they’re very happy there …’
‘Oh, no,’ Peggy said quickly. She glanced at Sid, but he was not taking part in this conversation. ‘You see, there’s the budgie, and Mr Mudd has his pigeons, and Dawn says her mother has a fur-allergy.’
‘I don’t see that pigeons and a budgie and two gerbils couldn’t get on,’ said Mrs Sparrow. ‘They’d all be quite separate.’
‘But then there’s the fur-allergy.’
‘Why couldn’t the gerbils get on with this firaliji, if it’s kept in a separate cage?’
‘No, Mum, it’s not an animal. It’s a – a thing that Mrs Mudd’s got.’
‘I understood that perfectly well, thank you.’
‘No, Mum: it’s an allergy she’s got – to fur. Fur brings on a kind of cold. Like hayfever, rather.’
Mrs Sparrow drew a deep breath. ‘I always thought she was a sly woman,’ she said, and slammed off into the kitchen. She came back to say: ‘And what the council’s thinking of – letting old man Mudd keep all those pigeons! It’s a disgrace!’
This time she slammed off and did not come back.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mrs Sparrow had a delightful holiday from the gerbils.
On the first Saturday Bill Sparrow gave up his usual gardening and took his wife into town. They went shopping. They chose new curtain material for the living room, and Bill Sparrow put down the money for it. Afterwards they had some tea, and then they went to the cinema.
The next day Mrs Sparrow spent some happy hours making up the new curtains. From the old curtains she made new cushion covers. From the old cushion covers she made new dusters. She already had a large number of dusters, but Mrs Sparrow did a good deal of dusting.
Meanwhile, the gerbils had settled into the Mudd household. The Mudds were easy people. Mr and Mrs Mudd had never bothered much with television or books or conversation: Mr Mudd was preoccupied with his pigeons; Mrs Mudd knitted. If Dawn wanted two gerbils in her room for a bit, that was all right. If her friend, Peggy Parker, wanted to stay for the night, while the gerbils were there, that was also all right. There was a put-you-up bed, and Peggy brought her own sleeping bag.
It was also all right if Peggy’s brother, Sid, came every day to attend to his gerbils. He had forbidden Peggy and Dawn to take the gerbils out of their cage except when he was there. He was afraid of some mishap in a strange house. But he came regularly to renew the gerbils’ food and change their water, to give them a quick run, and to see them securely home again.
When Sid had gone, it was very quiet in the Mudds’ house. The distant cooing of the pigeons from the bottom of the garden, the hymning of Mrs Mudd as she knitted downstairs – that was all. Peggy lowered her chin on to her arms, spread on the table in front of the gerbil cage, and stared at Bubble and Squeak. Bubble and Squeak stared back.
She wondered what it was like to see everything through bars, to have beneath your feet a little sawdust-covered metal floor instead of the vast Mongolian desert. To have bars above you, and above the bars a white ceiling, instead of blue infinity.
‘I suppose it’s their home,’ she said aloud.
Dawn said, ‘What is?’
‘Their cage. They were born in this cage, or one just like it, at the Garden Centre. Their home. Just as our house is our home.’
‘But they can’t walk in and out, as you walk in and out of your house.’
‘Sid lets them out.’
‘Sid puts them back.’
‘I go out of our house; I come back.’
‘No,’ said Dawn Mudd. ‘It’s not the same at all.’ She thought carefully. ‘At least, it’s not quite the same.’
‘Do they long and long to be free? I think they do. Sid thinks they don’t, but that’s because they’re his gerbils. He wants them to want to stay his.’
‘Nobody knows what gerbils long for, for certain,’ said Dawn Mudd. ‘But they wouldn’t get peanuts anywhere but in that cage. That’s for certain.’
They heard a hymn getting louder. Mrs Mudd was coming upstairs with a cup of cocoa and a mince pie each. It was weeks to Christmas yet; but, as she said, she liked to look ahead. (Mrs Mudd was knitting for an unborn grandchild: knitting needles stuck out now from the pocket of her overall.) These were the first mince pies of the season. So, wish.
Peggy looked at Bubble and Squeak, and took a first bite and wished.
Mrs Mudd did not come far into the room, or stay long, because of her fur-allergy. But she said to Peggy: ‘Mr Mudd thought of taking some pigeon droppings round to your dad. That all right?’
‘I should think so.’
As Mrs Mudd left them, she was plucking the needles from her pocket and resuming her carolling.
Through the bedroom window they saw Mr Mudd coming round the corner of the house from the direction of his pigeons in the back garden. From above, there wasn’t much to be seen of him. Mr Mudd was smaller than Mrs Mudd. He was quite bald on the top of his head, with a little fringe of straight red hair round the baldness. Just now he was carrying a bucket of pigeon droppings. People on the estate who were favoured with Mudd droppings grew by far the best dahlias. Mr Mudd went off in the direction of Bill Sparrow and his garden.
Dawn Mudd said: ‘Do you remember your dad?’
‘You mean my real dad? David Parker?’
‘Was his name David? What was he like?’
‘I – I don’t know. But if I saw him, I’d know him.’
‘But he’s dead!’
‘Yes. But I’d know him.’
‘Was he nicer than Bill Sparrow?’
‘Yes. Well, really, I suppose I just don’t know. Bill’s not bad. My real dad – I remember he used to give me his finger to hold, instead of his hand. I used to take hold of it with the whole of my hand, and we’d walk along – like hand in hand, only finger in hand. He had a big finger, and I had a little hand then. My hand’s much bigger now.’ Peggy held her hand in front of her, turned it. She brooded. ‘Sid remembers him properly. Amy doesn’t remember him at all.’
Dawn said: ‘Funny.’
‘Funny?’
‘I was just trying to imagine someone who wasn’t my dad being my dad … Just funny.’
Mr Mudd had disappeared round a far corner.
They both fell into silence. Distantly pigeons cooed. From downstairs Mrs Mudd changed her tune: ‘O come, all ye faithful!’ she sang, joyfully and triumphantly.
Dawn Mudd said: ‘I saw a book in the library: How to Enjoy Gerbils. I got it out. I thought i
t might be good for your mum.’
Peggy said: ‘She’d never, never read it.’
But Dawn Mudd had not been so silly as to expect that. ‘I thought, just leave it about in your house, where she’ll see it. There are lots of coloured pictures. She might pick it up, just to look at the pictures. Then read a bit, perhaps.’
‘All right. I’ll try.’
So Peggy took home with her that day the book called How to Enjoy Gerbils and laid it on the living-room table, open. Bill Sparrow saw it there, picked it up, and spent some time looking through it. He put it back, closed, with the front cover uppermost, on the table again.
Mrs Sparrow came in and saw the book. ‘How to Enjoy Gerbils,’ she read. On the last word she gave a snort and flung the book, unopened, on to a chair. Later, however, she moved the book again, and in doing so she opened it. She began to read a little. Sid walked in as she was reading.
‘Sid, how old are those gerbils of yours?’
‘Jimmy Dean’s cousin said one. About one.’
‘So they’ve probably another one to three more years of life before them?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps.’
‘So it says here. Well, isn’t that nice for me? Only three more years, at the outside, to have to endure them!’
She slapped the book down yet again and walked out of the room. She passed Peggy in the doorway.
‘She was reading it, wasn’t she?’ Peggy asked eagerly.
‘She may never actually enjoy gerbils,’ said Sid, ‘but at least she’s facing up to them.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
The gerbils came home from the Mudds’ house in the last week before the Christmas holidays.
They were received with rejoicing by the children. Bill Sparrow looked on, smiling. Their mother held aloof, but there seemed no doubt that she did not feel as badly about gerbils as she had once done. She put up with them. She did not love them – any more than she loved other things she had to put up with. She put up with the draught through the back door, and old Mrs Pring’s cats, and Bill Sparrow’s gardening boots. She loved none of these things, but she put up with them. Now she had begun putting up with gerbils.
On the first morning after the gerbils’ return, Peter Peters called early on the way to school. He wanted to see Bubble and Squeak again. Peggy left her breakfast, in the middle, to show them to him. Amy had finished her breakfast and went with her. Then Peggy came back to the kitchen, leaving Amy and Peter Peters gazing into the gerbil cage.
‘Did you tell them not to take them out?’ Sid asked. Peggy called to Amy from the kitchen with Sid’s message.
Peggy and Sid went on with their breakfasts. Bill had nearly finished his. Mrs Sparrow was busy about the kitchen.
Amy and Peter Peters were still with the gerbils.
Dawn Mudd called. That meant it was time to set off for school.
‘Come on, Amy!’ her mother called. ‘Or you’ll be late!’
What happened next is not certain, because neither Amy nor Peter Peters were reliable witnesses. What is certain is that, disobeying Sid, Amy had taken either Bubble or Squeak out to show Peter Peters. They were stroking the gerbil when Mrs Sparrow called from the kitchen. Amy was instantly in a hurry not to be late. The gerbil was put back into the cage at once. Then, at once, Amy shut the door of the cage, and slammed the bolt across it. The bolt was made of wire, and rather light: it had to be shot home rather carefully, and Amy was in too much of a hurry to be careful. Either she did not shoot the bolt far enough, or she shot it so hard that it bounced back. Whichever happened, the door of the cage came ajar.
The enterprising gerbils took advantage of this.
The one lucky thing, as Bill Sparrow later pointed out, was that they must have escaped almost at once. They began exploring. Already Peggy and Amy, with Dawn Mudd and Peter Peters, had left for school; but the others were still in the kitchen. The door from the hall into the kitchen was open, like the door from the living room into the hall. Mrs Sparrow, facing in that direction, gave a moan. Bill was halfway through his last cup of tea; Sid was tying his shoelaces. Both looked up, and turned towards the point at which Mrs Sparrow was staring.
On the threshold of the doorway sat Bubble – or was it Squeak? He sat up on his haunches, his forepaws against his chest, gazing at them all in amazement.
Sid pushed his chair back with a cry, and Bill Sparrow gave a sudden guffaw.
Squeak – or was it Bubble? – dropped suddenly on all fours, and whisked round the corner and back in the direction from which he must have come.
Sid rushed after him.
There was no sign of a gerbil in the hall by the time Sid got there, nor on the living-room floor. However, a gerbil was perched on the cushion of a chair within easy jumping distance of the top of the living-room table. That gerbil somehow looked as if it had just come from the table, not as if it were in the act of going back to it. But, of course, you couldn’t be sure. Unless you were Peggy, you simply could not be sure which gerbil was which.
On the living-room table stood the cage, empty, of course, and with its door wide open.
One gerbil, but not two.
Sid made a quick dive towards the gerbil on the cushion. The gerbil made a quick dive into the narrow dark cavern formed by the leaning of the cushion against the back of the chair.
‘Got you!’ said Sid. He began exploring with one hand from one side of the cushion and with the other from the other. His hands met: no gerbil. The gerbil popped out suddenly from underneath the middle of the cushion. Sid whipped one hand out to catch him. His fingers closed on him, but roughly. The gerbil bit him. Sid yelped and let go. The gerbil darted back under the cushion.
‘Want help?’ asked Bill. He had followed Sid at leisure.
‘Put in one hand here, and the other hand the other side,’ directed Sid. ‘And don’t try to catch him with your whole hand. He’s in a panic. He’ll bite. Get his tail. But, anyway, he’ll probably come out at the front again, and I’ll catch him then.’
Bill Sparrow did as he was told. As before, the gerbil came out at the front of the cushion, where Sid was waiting for him. Sid pounced more skilfully this time, caught him by his tail, and popped him into the cage. He shut the door and bolted it carefully.
One gerbil – but not two.
His mother stood behind him. ‘It’s time to go. Have you got it?’
‘Yes. One. But not both.’
‘For heaven’s sake! A gerbil loose, and we’re both going to be late for work, and you’re going to miss your school bus!’ She began frantically moving chairs and also cushions on chairs. The other two searched as well.
No second gerbil.
Mrs Sparrow glanced at the clock. ‘You go, Bill. I’ll follow.’
He went.
She eyed her son. ‘I’m not going until I’ve seen you on that bus, Sid.’
Plainly she meant what she said. So Sid decided to be plain with his mother too. ‘I’m not going to school until I’ve found my gerbil. If it’s left to itself all day, anything might happen.’
‘What?’
‘If it got outside somehow, a cat.’
Mrs Sparrow said nothing.
‘Or it could get under the floorboards and die of starvation there. And rot. And smell.’
Sid was watching his mother closely. Her expression was changing from its original firmness.
‘Under the floorboards?’
‘Yes.’
Suddenly she said: ‘Promise me faithfully that, if you do find it by dinner-time, you’ll go in to afternoon school. I’ll give you money for the bus fare.’
He promised.
‘Although what reason you’ll give for not going this morning …’
‘I could tell them the truth.’
Just as Mrs Sparrow was leaving the house, she stuck her head in again: ‘I’ll tell Mrs Pring. She’ll look in to see you’re all right. And you can help yourself from the fridge.’
When his mother had g
one, Sid did a thorough turnout of the living room. Somehow it looked tousled when he had finished with it. No gerbil.
But he supposed that the gerbil might have gone anywhere, even upstairs. So upstairs and downstairs Sid searched, wherever a door had been left ajar, or wherever there was a gap between the bottom of a shut door and the threshold (and the house was not a particularly well-built one). Soon most of the house began to have that tousled look.
But no gerbil.
He wondered if it were true that gerbils come back to their home cages in the end, anyway. He would have to rely on that, or on the gerbil’s moving about enough to make a noise he could hear. He himself would have to be very quiet.
He took a comfortable chair out into the hall, where he hoped to be able to hear a sound – if it were loud enough – from anywhere in the house. Luckily the caged gerbil seemed asleep, so there was no noise from him. But Sid heard his own noises, as he fidgeted anxiously in his chair. The creak of the chair … the scrape of his shoe against the leg … and then his own breathing … and a cough he would have to let out …
But the house round him was so still that he jumped when the flap of the front door letter box went up. He guessed it was old Mrs Pring. So it was dinner time already.
Mrs Pring always thought of Sid as a little boy, because she had known him so long. She called through the letter box: ‘Don’t be frightened, dear. I’ve brought you some hot soup, and I thought I’d bring you –’ On the last word, her fingers must have slipped, for the word was lost in the clatter of the flap snapping down again.
Sid could see through the glass panels of the front door that the dumpy figure of Mrs Pring was burdened with two objects. One – the bowl of soup? – in her right hand; the other, a light orangey-brown colour, on or under her left arm. No wonder she hadn’t managed to keep the letter-flap up for long.
Unsuspecting, Sid threw wide the front door.
In her right hand Mrs Pring carried a steaming bowl.
Under her left arm she carried her cat, Ginger.
Sid gaped at the cat, while Mrs Pring began at once to say that his mother had said there was a rat in the house, and that Sid was trying to catch it, and if so, Ginger was the one. The best ratter, the best mouser –