“I’ve got an idea, Miss,” said Mark.
“Let’s hear from someone else for a change,” said Miss Moss. “Louise?”
“We could have a bring and buy sale, Miss Moss,” said Louise. She liked bringing and was very good at buying.
“We could have a sponsored run,” said Jason, who always came first at running.
“I’ve got a better idea,” said Mark, who simply couldn’t keep quiet. “Let’s have a parade with all of us dressed up as guide dogs with collecting tins round our necks and we could have my Great Gran at the back of the parade and we could be leading her. We could all go woof, woof woof and –”
“That’s enough, Mark. It’s certainly an original idea but I don’t think it’s very practical. Still, I’m glad you’re showing such an interest.”
Chapter Two
No wonder Mark was interested. He boasted to Jason and Louise all the way home.
“Just wait till you see my Great Gran out with her guide dog! He’ll have to go very slowly so my Great Gran can keep up. I’ll train him to be ever so careful.”
“Don’t talk daft, Mark Spark,” said Louise. “They have proper trainers for the guide dogs.”
“And Miss Moss didn’t say your Great Gran was getting this guide dog,” said Jason.
“She’s blind so of course she’ll get one,” said Mark. “Wait till my Great Gran hears.”
“I think the whole street can hear,” said Jason, wincing away from Mark. “You don’t half bellow sometimes, Mark.”
Mark was used to talking in a loud voice for Great Gran because she was a little deaf as well as blind. She couldn’t hear when Mark knocked at her door so he had his own key.
“Great Gran!” Mark yelled, flying through her hall.
Great Gran wasn’t great at all. She was a very little lady and when Mark went bounding straight on top of her she nearly got squashed.
“What’s this, the human whirlwind?” she said. “Get off of me, you great lump!” but she laughed and tickled Mark.
“D-o-o-o-n’t!” Mark squealed. He was very ticklish, especially under the arms. “Give over, Great Gran. Listen!”
“I can’t help but listen, Mr Squirm-and-Squiggle. You hungry? The teapot’s brewing and there’s marmite and crisp sandwiches and jammy buns.”
“Wow, great. But do listen, Great Gran. You’re going to get a dog!”
‘No, I’m not!”
‘Yes, you are. My school’s saving up to get you a dog.”
“What would I be doing with a dog at my age, you soppy date? I can’t even get out myself, let alone take a dog for a walk.”
“That’s the point, Great Gran,” said Mark, tucking into his tea. “You don’t have to take the dog for a walk. It can take you for a walk. It’s a guide dog, get it?” Mark sprayed crisp crumbs in his excitement.
“Oh, one of them,” said Great Gran. “Yes, they’re a smashing idea. That young girlie I see up at the eye hospital, she’s going to be getting a guide dog. It’ll make all the difference to her. She’ll be able to pop into the town or slip out of an evening no bother at all.”
“But I want you to have a guide dog, Great Gran!” said Mark, so upset that he actually stopped eating.
“They’d never give me a guide dog, pet. I’m too old. I couldn’t get out and about even if I had a dog. And I’d have to be taught how to look after it, and I’m too old a dog to learn new tricks.”
“Ooooh,” said Mark, bitterly disappointed. “Why do you have to be so old, Great Gran?”
“That’s what I ask myself, little chum. Here, have a jammy bun. Have them both, darling, you’re a growing boy.”
Mark ate both buns and felt a bit better. They settled down in front of the television and watched Neighbours (Great Gran just listened) and then Mark read aloud. They were reading from a big fat paperback called Love’s Flame. They hadn’t got to any flaming bits yet, but there was a lot of love. They were the bits Great Gran and Mark liked best. He read in funny voices, deep down in his tummy for Sir Jasper and high up and silly for Roseanne the servant girl. Great Gran laughed until her eyes went weepy. Mark laughed too and forgot about the guide dog.
Chapter Three
Mark still wanted to help raise the money for the guide dog all the same.
Miss Moss decided to try the Bring and Buy sale first.
“Bring lots of gifts,” said Miss Moss.
Jason was bringing a big box of chocolates (if he could keep them out of Ben’s way).
Louise was bringing a big plush teddy she’d never played with and some old videos and a knitted toilet roll cover made by her mum.
Mark had problems deciding what to bring. He wanted all his toys and his mum was too busy to make anything.
“I can knit,” said Great Gran. “I’ll knit you up a pair of socks quick as a wink.”
“Thanks,” said Mark doubtfully. Great Gran had never been much of a knitter even when she could see.
He felt even more doubtful when she produced the socks. They were made out of scraps of wool so they didn’t even match. One was mostly pink, with yellow stripes. The other was red with black at the top.
“Do they look all right?” said Great Gran. “I think I might have dropped a stitch or two.”
“They look smashing,” said Mark loyally.
The other children didn’t think they looked smashing when he slipped them on the Bring and Buy stall. They laughed and pointed.
“Whoever brought those awful old socks?” they said.
Jason knew. Louise knew. They looked at each other. They looked at Mark.
“I think they’re absolutely brilliant socks,” said Mark fiercely. “I’ve simply got to have them before anyone else snaps them up. Only thirty pence? That’s a real bargain!”
He bought the socks himself. He put them on there and then, although they looked even odder on the leg. Mark only had five pence left to spend now. Nowhere near enough for the box of chocolates.
“Well, they’ll keep your feet warm anyway,” said Jason.
“They look dead trendy,” lied Louise.
Mark smiled at his friends and didn’t mind quite so much about the chocolates. And at least Great Gran’s socks weren’t left lying unwanted on the stall. Louise’s mum’s knitted toilet roll cover was reduced right down to five pence and still no one would buy it. Louise was getting very pink in the face.
“I’ll buy it as a present for my Great Gran,” said Mark. “I bet she’ll like it.”
Great Gran liked it a lot.
“What a dear little knitted hat. I’ll pop it on every time I go out in the back yard. It’ll keep my head nice and cosy.”
Great Gran’s socks kept Mark’s feet more than cosy. He wore them when they had their sponsored walk. (Miss Moss thought a run might prove too energetic).
The walk seemed energetic enough for Mark. Jason rushed ahead right away. Then Louise left Mark far behind. Soon Mark was trailing round the playing fields by himself.
He sat down for a little rest. He took his shoes off and aired his molten feet. One toe had poked a little hole in the red sock already. It looked like a nose peeping through. Mark wiggled his toe and made the sock stick its nose in the air. Then he made the sock sneeze. He’d have liked to play socks for the rest of the afternoon but he had to put his shoes back on and crawl round the playing field again. And again. And again. And even then he didn’t do anywhere near as many circuits as Louise, let alone Jason. Left to Mark, they wouldn’t manage as much as a puppy paw or the tip of a tail.
Chapter Four
“What am I going to do, Great Gran?” said Mark, munching a condensed milk sandwich. “I’ve been useless at this fund-raising lark so far. And now Miss Moss says our class are going to give a concert, charging ten pence a seat.”
“That’ll be fun, lovie,” said Great Gran.
“No, it won’t,” Mark wailed, not watching his sandwich carefully enough. Condensed milk dripped down his wrist and up his shirt sleeve,
so he had to lick it quickly. “I don’t know what to do in this concert, Great Gran. Jason’s going to sing a pop song but Miss Moss says I’ve got a voice like a fog horn. Louise is going to do a ballet dance and she’s wearing a special fairy costume but I can’t dance for toffee.”
“I can’t see you being a fairy, pet,” said Great Gran. “Can’t you say a poem? You’re ever so comic. You always have me in stitches when you read Love’s Flame.”
Mark thought hard, sticking his finger into the jug of condensed milk and then licking it. He did a lot of sticking and licking. Sometimes it was just as well Great Gran couldn’t see properly.
“Maybe we could act Love’s Flame? I could get Louise to be Roseanne, only she’d try to do it properly and then it wouldn’t be funny. Maybe Jason could be Roseanne? No, he’d feel soppy. I’d be Roseanne, only I’ve got to do Sir Jasper.”
“Can’t you do it all, pet? I know. Act it all out with puppets,” said Great Gran.
“Yes! But how can I make puppets? I’m not much good at Art and Craft.”
“You’ll have to keep it simple. Glove puppets.”
“Glove puppets,” said Mark, and then he snapped his sticky fingers and grinned. “I’ve got an idea.”
The concert was a big success. Jason sang his song. Louise did her ballet dance. Some of the boys whistled when they saw her pink ballet frock and Louise went pink too, but she got on with her dance and didn’t wobble once. Then she gave a fancy curtsey while everyone clapped.
But the Mark Spark Puppet Show was the smash hit of the concert. The puppet booth was a big cardboard box. Mark crouched down behind it and stuck his hands up over the top, working the two puppets. It made his arms ache but he carried on regardless. He spoke in Roseanne’s high squeaky voice while he made the pink and yellow puppet prance. (He’d simply sewn two blue button eyes on the stripey sock and tied on a hankie as an apron.) Then he spoke in Sir Jasper’s big booming voice and made the red and black puppet bounce about. (Two brown buttons for his eyes and Mark’s finger poking through the hole made a perfect nose.) Mark changed some of the Love’s Flame story, giving Sir Jasper a terrible cold so that he could sneeze a lot. He made the love scenes sillier than ever, and every time the Sir Jasper sock puppet pounced sneezily on Roseanne, murmuring daft endearments, the children roared with laughter. Miss Moss looked a little twitchy at first, but then she started laughing too, and at the end of Mark’s performance she stood up and cheered.
Mark had to act out the entire puppet show at Great Gran’s that teatime, and she chuckled and clapped and called him a proper caution, good enough to go on the stage.
“That’s what Miss Moss said, Great Gran,” said Mark. “And guess what! She says I should do a puppet show in the playground every day and charge everyone a penny a time to come and watch. I’m going to raise pounds and pounds for the guide dog.”
Mark didn’t quite raise pounds and pounds, but he certainly raised lots and lots of pennies. Eventually there was enough money to train a guide dog. The school was sent a big coloured photo of this very special dog. His name was printed at the bottom. He wasn’t called Woofer or Bruce or Rover. He wasn’t called Ben. He certainly wasn’t called Puffball.
He was called Mark.
MARK SPARK iN THE DARK
Mark hurtled out of bed, out of the bedroom, down the stairs three at a time, down the passage and out the back door. Into the dark. The great black terrifying outdoor dark.
Chapter One
Mark Spark walked home from school with his friends Jason and Louise. It was raining hard. Jason was wearing his big black wellie boots. He stamped happily in every puddle. Louise was wearing her Kermit-the-frog wellie boots. She sloshed her way along the gutter, taking her twin Kermits for a paddle.
Mark Spark didn’t have any wellie boots. Still, he didn’t see why Jason and Louise should have all the fun.He took a running jump at every puddle and landed with a big splash. He waded through the stream in the gutter and dabbled about in the sludge blocking the drains. His socks were soon sodden and his new trainers started to squelch.
“Your mum’s going to get mad when she sees those trainers. You only had them on your birthday, didn’t you?” said Jason.
“Mmm,” said Mark, looking at his new trainers. They didn’t look very new now. Jason was right. Mark’s mum was going to get mad.
“I’m not frightened of my mum,” said Mark, jumping in another puddle. He always had his tea with Great Gran, before Mum got back from work. Maybe Great Gran could cook his trainers as well as his tea so they’d be dry by the time Mum saw them?
“I’m getting new trainers for my birthday too,” said Louise. “Pink, to match my pink T-shirt and my pink leggings. Mark, come out of that puddle. Yuck, it’s all gungy!”
Some of the gunge clung to Mark’s trainers. He bent down to wipe it off. It moved. It was a big fat worm.
“Hello, worm!” Mark muttered. “What’s your name, eh? I’m Mark Spark. And you’re… Wilfred.”
“Have you gone completely crackers, Mark?” said Jason. “Why are you talking to your trainers?”
“And for my best birthday present I’m getting a tent. I want a pink one, because it’s my favourite colour,” said Louise. “And my mum says for my birthday treat I can have some friends to stay over night and we can all sleep in my tent out in the garden. Won’t that be great?”
“You bet!” said Jason. “We can come, can’t we, Mark and me? We’re your friends, aren’t we, Mark?” Suddenly he noticed that Mark was holding something. “What’s that you’ve got in your hand?” he asked.
‘It’s my new pet. Say how do you do to Wilfred.” Mark held Wilfred up so he could maybe waggle his tail.
“YUCK!” Louise squealed, and she went flying down the road in her frog wellies.
She screamed so loudly that Mark jumped and dropped Wilfred back in the puddle.
“Oh Wilfred, come back!” said Mark. “Louise, you are a bore. You’ve made Wilfred run away.”
Louise was still running away herself. “You keep that horrid worm away from me,” she shrieked. “If you bring it anywhere near me again I won’t let you stay overnight in my tent.”
“It’s okay, Louise,” said Jason, dashing backwards and forwards between them. “He’s dropped his worm. So we can still sleep in your tent, eh?”
“Bye bye, Wilfred,” said Mark sadly, stirring the muddy puddle in vain.
“Don’t you dare fetch it out again!” Louise shouted.
“I can’t. You’ve frightened him away,” said Mark, sighing. He squelched along the road. “I don’t know why you don’t like worms, Louise. They’re your favourite colour. Pink.”
“Is your birthday tent really going to be pink, Louise?” asked Jason.
“Yep, with a pink sleeping bag to match. You and Mark will have to bring your own sleeping bags for my birthday treat,” said Louise.
“No problem,” said Jason.
Mark Spark didn’t say anything. He did have a little problem. No, not a little problem. A Great Big Problem.
Chapter Two
Mark Spark didn’t know what he was going to do. He didn’t say anything to Jason. He didn’t say anything to Louise. He couldn’t tell them about his Great Big Problem. They might laugh at him. They would think he was a silly baby. Just thinking about it made Mark blush Louise’s favourite colour.
Mark Spark had always had this Great Big Problem but he had kept it a deadly secret so far. Mark Spark was afraid of the dark.
He wasn’t frightened of anything else. He’d dare anything. He didn’t care about getting into trouble. He didn’t cry when he fell and gashed his head and had to have ten stitches at the hospital. He didn’t flinch when a pit bull terrier barked and tried to bite him. Everyone thought Mark Spark was the bravest boy in the whole school.
But he was still scared of the dark. He had a little lamp at home. Mum always left the hall light on too, in case he had to nip to the bathroom in the night. But even in the l
ight he knew the dark was there, in all the other rooms. It was outside the windows, this huge terrifying darkness.
He knew he’d never be able to sleep outside in a tent with Jason and Louise. He could have a torch but that would be just a very little light in the very big darkness outdoors. It would be much much much too scary. Mark Spark might end up blubbing like a baby.
Great Gran guessed something was wrong when Mark went to her house for his tea.
“I’ve mucked up my new trainers, Great Gran,” said Mark.
Great Gran was blind so she couldn’t see them. But she could feel them.
“You mucky pup,” she said. “We’d better give them a good wash, eh?”
Great Gran sorted out Mark’s trainers as best she could.
“But there’s still something wrong, duck,” she said. “Can’t you tell your Great Gran?”
“Well, I lost my pet worm Wilfred coming home from school,” said Mark.
“Did you, dearie? How tragic,” said Great Gran. “Still, I dare say you’ll find yourself another worm. You could go out in my back garden and get one right away. How about a lady worm this time? Wilma Worm?”
“Yes, good idea, Great Gran,” said Mark, but he didn’t sound enthusiastic.
‘There’s still something bothering my little lad,” said Great Gran, and she reached out for Mark and pulled him onto her lap. “What is it, chum?”
“Oh Great Gran!” Mark wailed. “I don’t know what to do. Louise is getting a tent for her birthday and she’s asked me and Jason to stay overnight to camp in her garden and I can’t because… because… because I’m scared of the dark.” Mark said it in a very little voice. Great Gran was rather deaf as well as blind but she heard him and she hugged him tight.