Station Jim Read online

  Accordingly, Alfie folded the card up, pressing the creases very tightly, so that one way up it looked like a hat,and the other way up it looked like a ship. They slipped out of the back gate, and trooped down to the river.

  They argued about who was going to drop it into the water, but of course Alfie won because he had made the boat, and he was the biggest and oldest. ‘It’s not fair! You always get to do the best things!’ said the others, but they knew that it was fair, really.

  The children peeked over the railing if they were tall enough, and through it if they weren’t, as Alfie held up the boat, said, ‘I name this ship the SS Gone Forever,’ and dropped it into the water. It fluttered down and fell into the water with a tiny splash, and the children rushed to the other side of the bridge to watch it float away.

  ‘It’s floating upside down,’ said Arthur sniffily.

  ‘It floats just as well as a hat,’ said Alfie, and indeed it did. It sailed off, whirling about in the eddies, and eventually disappeared around the bend about two hundred yards away.

  ‘I wonder where it’ll end up,’ said Sissy, and Alfie replied ‘Brazil’ in a very wise tone of voice.

  On their way home Beryl asked, ‘What does “gallivanting” mean? Mr Cramp says it’s what we do in holidays if we’re not on the harvest.’

  ‘Must be messing about waiting for Dad to come home so we can have tea, then,’ said little Albert.

  ‘Must be,’ agreed the others.

  ‘What’ll we do if Dad finds out what we did?’ asked Sissy.

  ‘Run away up the hill,’ said Alfie sensibly. ‘You know how Dad hates running.’

  JIM

  The little black-and-tan puppy, with its small bright eyes and wagful rump, grew terribly quickly. He would leap up into the air and lick you on the face quite suddenly when you weren’t expecting it, and was very warming indeed on cold evenings if you settled into an armchair with him in your arms. He often slept on Mr Ginger Leghorn’s lap after supper, the two of them snoring lightly together.

  His most annoying habit was pooping and weeing indoors. The poop smelled much ranker than seemed reasonable for a small dog, and he tended to leave it in just those places where it was hardest to clear up, or most likely to be stepped on. It was not a welcome experience, skidding on dog poop, even in your hobnails. It took five weeks of scolding and being put out in the yard before he realised that if you did it outdoors, you received praise rather than blame, and a biscuit.

  His second most annoying habit was diving face first into whatever anyone was trying to do, whether it was homework, or shovelling coal. Everything had to be bitten and worried at. There wasn’t much you could do, other than have somebody drag him away and put him out in the yard.

  His third most annoying habit was nipping at your hands with his needle-sharp little teeth, leaving punctures in the skin, and sometimes even drawing blood. Arthur Leghorn, bright little boy that he was, suggested, ‘Why don’t we each carry something that he’s actually allowed to chew, and give him that?’ He carried a golf ball with a split in the skin, Sissy carried a doll with a missing head, Alfie carried a wooden catapult with one fork broken off, Albert carried an undarnable woollen sock, and Beryl carried a piece of coconut shell. All you had to do was present it to him, saying, ‘Here, Jim, have a chew of this!’ and he’d be off under the table with it. Of course, you had to remember to fetch it back later, slobber ’n’ all.

  Equally annoying was his enthusiasm for worrying at your shoes and ankles when you were trying to walk along. Mr Leghorn thought that the only way to deal with this was to keep walking, as if a small demented animal were not attached to his trouser leg at all. The cuffs soon became full of tiny little holes, and many times he accidentally trod on the dog, or was nearly tripped. The children became outraged by the way that Jim kept undoing the laces on their hobnail boots, and would cry out, ‘Stop it, Jim! Stop it!’ Mrs Leghorn carried a wooden spoon, and would tap him smartly on the haunch if he refused to let go. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Ginger, ‘he’ll soon grow out of it.’ One day he discovered that Jim would lose interest almost straight away if you stopped moving at all, and the whole family adopted the policy of standing stock-still if their ankles were attacked. It was like a game of Grandmother’s Footsteps.

  When they were not at school, Jim spent all day out with the children, hurtling about on the hillsides and being made to fetch sticks, especially from the pond at the edge of town, where the ducks would scatter as he splashed in. He came and helped with the harvest, chasing futilely after the rabbits that shot out of the ever-diminishing squares in the middle of the fields. He seemed to be a dog that never grew tired, but would abruptly fall asleep when he came home, seeking safety from Tildo under the table, until Mr Ginger Leghorn came home, when he would wake up, go barmy with pleasure and anticipation, and be rewarded with the crusts from Mr Leghorn’s lunchtime sandwiches. Mr Leghorn particularly liked the smell behind the dog’s ears, and would sniff away at it, saying it was like the combined smell of toast and babies.

  The trouble with this dog was that no one could think of a name for him. He came bouncing up, no matter what you called him, and so the children simply called him ‘Puppy’, or ‘Boy’, and Molly Leghorn called him ‘Nuisance’, or ‘Piddler’, which was not very polite, but she had her reasons, complaining that it was always her and nobody else who had to go and fetch the mop and bucket. He also acquired another name, which came about because, as he grew older, he developed a funny habit of smiling when he was pleased to see you.

  This was no ordinary smile. His lips drew back right up to his gums, and his eyes almost closed altogether. If he had not been wagging his tail, you would have thought that he was snarling and just about to give you a nip. ‘Gracious me,’ said people when they met him, ‘I never saw such a grin on a dog in my life!’ and so a great many people simply referred to him as ‘Grinner’, or ‘Smiler’.

  One evening, at table, Mr Ginger Leghorn said, ‘We can’t go on having a dog with no name. We’ve got to think of a moniker.’

  ‘The dog’s not bothered,’ said Mrs Leghorn.

  ‘Well, I am bothered,’ replied Mr Leghorn, ‘and the children are bothered, aren’t you, children?’

  ‘No,’ chorused the children, shaking their heads.

  ‘Let’s call it “Dog”,’ said Albert, who was the smallest, but everybody just ignored him.

  ‘Let’s call him “Hobnail”,’ suggested Arthur.

  ‘Why?’ asked Sissy.

  ‘Don’t know, really.’

  ‘What about “Lancelot”?’ said Beryl.

  ‘Too posh these days,’ replied Mr Ginger Leghorn. ‘That’s even worse than Rupert.’

  ‘I was thinking of the noble knight,’ said Beryl, who had been reading The Tales of the Knights of the Round Table, Retold for Children by Mrs Humphrey Flopwell, that her mother had given her the previous Christmas.

  ‘What about “Prancelot”?’ said Arthur.

  ‘He’s not a horse, stupid,’ said Sissy.

  ‘Don’t call me stupid, stupid.’

  ‘Well, don’t be stupid then, stupid.’

  ‘Children! That’s enough,’ said Molly Leghorn sternly, ‘or it’ll be early bed without supper for the two of you.’

  ‘Mum, we’ve already had supper,’ pointed out Beryl.

  ‘But you’re not in bed yet, are you?’ replied her mother.

  ‘What about “Waggalot” or “Barkalot”?’ said Alfie.

  ‘What about “Poopalot”?’ said Sissy, and the children put their hands to their faces and giggled.

  ‘More like “Guffalot”,’ said Mr Ginger Leghorn, under his breath, so that no one else would hear him, except that Mrs Molly Leghorn did, and she stuck a sharp elbow into his ribs to reprove him.

  ‘I know what we’ll do,’ she said. ‘We’ll tell him to sit, and we’ll call him lots of names, and when we get to a name he likes, and wags his tail, that’s what we’ll call him.’

&n
bsp; So that is what they did, and at first it seemed not to work at all. Kneeling around him in a circle, these are the names they tried:

  Bertie, Jack, Rover, Teddy, Tony, Bobby, Fido, Caesar, Soldier, Sailor, Danny, Bomber, Buck, Lupo, Lucky, Sam, Tavistock and Exmoor.

  The dog wagged his tail pretty much equally at the sound of all of them, and the family was about to give up, when Sissy said ‘Jim!’ whereupon he leapt into her arms and tried to lick her lips, something she particularly hated because of the slobberiness and the germs. ‘Ugh!’ she exclaimed, and handed the puppy to Beryl.

  ‘Well, Jim it is,’ declared Mr Ginger Leghorn. ‘Shall we have a christening?’

  He fetched a bottle of ale from the cupboard, pulled the cork, put a finger down into the hole, and dabbed the beer on the dog’s forehead. ‘I hereby and herewithal, and however and notwithstanding and heretofore above agreed and below appended and all that malarkey, name you “Jim”,’ he pronounced. ‘God bless you and all who sail in you.’

  Then he took a swig of the ale, and said, ‘Thank God for that. We’ve got a name at last.’

  He plumped himself down into the armchair, said, ‘Come on, Jim!’ and Jim jumped into his lap.

  ‘Ever since we got the dog, I haven’t been on your lap once,’ complained Sissy.

  ‘Well, you’re not very restful,’ said Mr Ginger Leghorn. ‘Jim only bites my fingers. He doesn’t pinch my nose or pull my ears or tug at both ends of my moustache at the same time, or try to make funny shapes with my lips.’

  JIM AND TILDO

  Tildo the fluffy cat was still not at all pleased about Jim’s arrival in the house, and got into the habit of stalking up to him, all his fur standing on end to make himself look bigger, baring his teeth and hissing, and swiping him across the nose, as if to say, ‘I was here first, this is my territory, and you’d better leave before I do something a lot worse.’

  Poor Jim would yelp and creep away, his tail between his legs, with dark blood purling out of the tracks across his snout, and Mrs Molly Leghorn would shoo Tildo out, saying, ‘Horrid cat! How could you be so nasty to such a nice little puppy? What did he ever do to you?’ Tildo would go and sit on the windowsill outside the kitchen, glaring down through the glass at the dog, who would look up, whimper, and go back to hide under the kitchen table, where he now had a tattered old army blanket that Mr Ginger Leghorn had cadged from the quartermaster of his yeomanry regiment.

  It did not seem to matter how much Jim wanted to be friends with Tildo, the cat still hissed at him and took a swipe at his nose. Everyone could see that Jim desperately wanted to be friends, but Tildo would not be mollified.

  After about a month, when Jim had grown quite a lot, and the first breaths of autumn were in the air, there came a day when Tildo forgot to scratch the dog. He walked straight past with his tail up, and took no notice as he headed for the back door with his mind empty of dogs, but furbished with mice and rats instead.

  Jim cringed and whimpered and ran under the table, and then realised that something was wrong. It took a little time to work it out, but then he saw that he had nothing to cringe or whimper about. This was certainly most peculiar. He crept out again, and went to the back door to watch Tildo going up the hill. He decided to follow, but thought better of it when Tildo turned and looked at him with his big yellow eyes.

  The next day, Tildo again forgot to scratch the puppy, or even hiss at it, but padded off past him, out of the door and up the hill, thinking of rabbits.

  On the day after that Tildo absent-mindedly bumped Jim under the chin as he passed him on the way to the back door, and the day after that Tildo went round and round his legs in figures of eight, and bumped him under the chin a great many times. Jim just stood there in confusion wondering what this could all possibly mean.

  The day after that Jim absent-mindedly sniffed at Tildo’s backside because he had momentarily forgotten that Tildo wasn’t a dog, and Tildo hurried away to get that cold nose away from his bottom.

  And then there came the day when the children came in at five o’clock with empty stomachs and grubby faces and knees, and Sissy and Albert knelt down to look under the table to see if Jim was there in his usual place. ‘Blimey,’ said Albert, and whispered to the other children. ‘Here, you lot, come and look at this! Mum, come and look at this!’

  Down on their knees, they all saw the puppy fast asleep, with Tildo perched on top of him like a tea cosy. Tildo stared back at them with his big insolent yellow eyes, as if to say ‘What’s the matter with you lot? Never seen a cat with a dog before?’

  It wasn’t long after that when a bad-tempered brindled dog picked on Jim out in the street. Jim had never been in a proper dogfight before, and had no idea what to do if a big growly stranger suddenly grabs one of your ears in its teeth and tries to pull it off. He attempted to roll over and surrender, but it was difficult with one ear in such painful captivity, so he squeaked and yelped instead. Luckily, Tildo had been at the windowsill watching life out in the street, and suddenly there was a streak of tabby-coloured fluff, as he shot out of the door and hurled himself at the brindled dog, knocked it over sideways, and raked it across the eyes and snout with his claws. The dog let go of Jim’s ear, leapt to its feet, and hurtled off down the street with its tail between its legs, and Tildo in hot pursuit.

  Like Mr Ginger Leghorn, cats are not fond of running for any length of time, so Tildo was soon back, bumping Jim under the chin with the top of his head.

  The neighbours who had witnessed it all relayed the news to the Leghorn family, and Mr Ginger Leghorn gave Beryl sixpence to go to the butcher’s and come back with a marrowbone for Jim, and a little piece of ox liver for Tildo.

  BUCKETS AND CHAIR LEGS

  It is true that all puppies are charming and entertaining, and so to say that Jim had both those qualities does not tell anyone anything at all surprising.

  Some puppies, however, are a little bit like people who show signs of eccentricity from an early age.

  Jim’s first curious obsession was that he started to hate the sound of a chair being scraped across the flagstones of the kitchen. He found it extremely annoying and outrageous. Dogs have better hearing than humans, and perhaps he could hear something we cannot, such as a very high-pitched, painful squeak.

  Whatever it was, that scraping sound made him so angry that he had no choice but to attack the chair concerned. He would leap up, furious and snarling (which always made Tildo fly for the door), and throw himself at whichever chair leg first presented itself for savaging. Sometimes it was difficult to wrestle the chair away from him if you wanted to sit down again, because Jim would simply not let go unless you said ‘Bucket, Jim!’, and you’ll find out why that worked in just a moment.

  The children, of course, scraped their chairs on purpose, and Mr and Mrs Leghorn lifted their chairs carefully to avoid making any scraping noise at all.

  After a while the chair legs began to look very sorry indeed, all ragged and chewed and punctured, and of course Tildo made it all much worse by using them as scratching posts.

  At this point Mr and Mrs Leghorn had to decide whether to get new chairs and keep the animals away from them, or put up with the continuing damage. It was not a difficult decision. New ones were expensive, and anyway the whole family enjoyed it when Jim attacked the chairs, and they weren’t going to give it up just for the sake of smartness.

  And now for the bucket story: Mrs Molly Leghorn had a galvanised bucket with a special grid on one side for squeezing out a mop, and Jim loved it when she was mopping the kitchen floor. He would pounce on the mophead and cling on to it with his teeth so that the only way she could get on with mopping was to swing the puppy around the floor. Normally she would shut Jim out of the house and do the mopping, but quite often, just to entertain visitors, she would show them her dogmop in action.

  Jim loved the laughter and applause, and this only made him worse, so sometimes he would go to the corner and bark at the mop and bucket until
somebody got them out and had to pretend to clean the floor so that he could be swung around. The floor became very shiny, and Jim became very grimy, and every few days he would have to be washed in the garden, which he also loved, because at the end he would shake all the water from his body, and whoever was washing him would have to run out of the way of the shining shower of drops. The children enjoyed avoiding Jim’s showers.

  It happened that one day nobody was paying attention to his barking at the mop and bucket, so he thought he would take urgent action to remedy the situation. He picked the bucket up by the rim, which must have felt quite strange to his teeth, and tried to carry it into the parlour, where Mrs Molly Leghorn was having a cup of tea, and a break from the mangle.

  The trouble was that he could not see where he was going with the big bucket right in front of his eyes. He clanged into the table leg, and then clanged into the legnext to it. He clanged into the cupboard under the sink and then clanged into the door jamb.

  Mrs Molly Leghorn heard the mysterious clanging coming her way, but knew it was not the ghost of a long-dead knight with his head under his arm, because along with the clanging there was a sort of muffled and echoey barking and growling.

  ‘Oh, Jim! You daft puppy!’ she cried, as the dog came into the parlour and clanged straight into her. Jim put the bucket down, backed off, and started barking at it.

  ‘I don’t want to do any mopping,’ she said.

  Jim went back to the kitchen to fetch the mop. It was all very well, but he couldn’t get it through the doorway when he held it in the middle, and it didn’t occur to him to drag it along lengthways by the mop end, so he just carried on trying to get it through the doorway while Mrs Leghorn stood there laughing at him. So he dropped the mop and returned to his bucket. He clanged into the doorways and walls before he dropped it at Mrs Leghorn’s feet.